by Tim Ellis
A Life for a Life
Tim Ellis
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Kindle Edition
Copyright 2010 & 2013 Timothy Stephen Ellis
Second Edition
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Kindle Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Books written by Tim Ellis can be obtained either through the author’s official website: http://timellis.weebly.com/index.html at Smashwords.com or through online book retailers.
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To Pam, with love as always
And in memory of my mother June Enid Susan Ellis
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Thank you to proofreader/editor Paula Green
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Show no pity:
Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.
Deuteronomy 19:21
Chapter One
Tuesday 14TH January
The machine swallowed Greg Taylor’s day-return ticket to London. He stepped through the automatic barrier as it opened, unaware that he would be dead before he reached his house. Glancing up, he saw that the large railway clock above the station exit displayed six thirty. The shop was still open and it crossed his mind to buy a bar of chocolate to eat while he walked the short distance home, but he knew his wife Debbie would kill him if he didn’t attack the promised stew and dumplings with a ravenous hunger.
Zigzagging round a rather slow-moving plump woman with a walking stick, he trudged out of Chigwell train station and turned left towards Station Road. The one orange streetlight barely lit his way. He was tired, his back ached and his eyes were stinging. All day he had been sitting in a windowless, air-conditioned seminar room at the International Hotel on the water’s edge at Canary Wharf listening to someone prattle on about improving GCSE performance in history. He was looking forward to getting home, eating his meal and relaxing in his armchair in front of the television with his family. Year 8 would have to be happy with a quiz on Tudor Monarchs tomorrow; he’d get up early to do an Internet search and print a quiz off.
After passing Dennis the Baker, the 24-hour Mart and Harrison’s estate agents, he turned into Lakeside Road. There used to be a lake and the road used to run beside it, but now there was no lake, only a road with houses. He headed up the hill towards Ralston Drive, hands stuffed deep into coat pockets and his nose snuffled into his scarf. Snow had been promised, but none had materialised yet. The north already wore its blanket of white – maybe the south would get it tonight. With luck, the head teacher might close the school. He could do with a couple of days off to catch up with the marking.
As he turned sideways to let someone wearing a black coat with a hood pass him on the narrow pavement, he felt a pain in his chest that shot up his neck, exploded in his brain, and took his breath away. He glanced down and saw a gloved hand wrapped around the handle of something protruding from between his third and fourth thoracic ribs.
‘A life for a life, Mr Taylor,’ the stranger whispered.
It was the last thing Greg Taylor heard as he slid down the garden wall of 29, Ralston Drive onto the pavement, just two doors away from his home.
Before he walked away, the hooded stranger stooped, slipped something small into the dead man’s mouth and said: ‘For Johnny Tomkins.’
***
Staring out of the window of her bedroom at 33, Ralston Drive, seventeen year old Kishi Taylor was listening to Shut Up by the Black Eyed Peas on her iPod when she saw her father walking up the hill.
She went to the bedroom door and shouted down the stairs, ‘Dad’s here.’ Then she returned to the window and waited for him to appear at the gate and walk up the path so that she could wave at him. When he didn’t arrive, she began to doubt that she had even seen him at all.
‘I thought you said your father was here?’ her mother called up to her.
She padded onto the landing in her pink slippers and nightdress and leaned over the banister clutching the pink rollers in her hair. ‘I saw him - I’m sure I did.’
Just then, an insistent knocking came from the front door. Kishi went down the stairs as her mother opened it. She could smell the stew and dumplings bubbling in the kitchen and hoped her father had arrived – she was starving. Maybe he’s lost his keys, she thought.
‘Debbie, call an ambulance. . .the police.’ It was Mr Mayhew from across the road, horror seared into his face.
‘Hello, Harry,’ her mother said. ‘Oh dear. What’s the matter?’
‘It’s Greg. . . He’s been stabbed.’
Kishi didn’t understand. It was as if Mr Mayhew was speaking in a foreign language.
Her mother was standing holding the door open, letting the cold air in. She looked around at Kishi with her mouth agape, like a mountain tunnel, as if she didn’t believe Mr Mayhew was actually speaking to her.
Mr Mayhew walked into the hall, uninvited, picked up the phone and dialled 999. ‘Hello? Yes. . . Ambulance and police, please. There’s been a stabbing…’
Kishi heard Mr Mayhew provide the 999 operator with the required details as if she were listening to a conversation through a padded wall with cotton wool stuffed in her ears. Her father… stabbed… What did that mean?
‘Come on,’ Mr Mayhew said, grasping her mum’s elbow. ‘He’s outside number 29. I was closing my gate when I saw what looked like a teenager walk past your husband. Then Greg collapsed on the pavement and the boy walked away as if nothing had happened.’
I saw him as well, Kishi thought, but it wasn’t a boy - it was a man.
Looking at Kishi, her mother said, ‘You’d better stay here.’
Ignoring her, Kishi pushed past them and rushed along the path to the gate. She stopped and looked down the hill expecting to see her father walking towards her, but instead, in the glow from the orange streetlight, she saw a man slumped against the wall of number 29.
Her mother reached the gate and placed a hand gently on Kishi’s shoulder. ‘You should have put your dressing gown on, love. You’ll catch your death dressed like that.’ Then she saw Greg Taylor, the man who used to be her husband, and screamed as she ran along the road. ‘Oh, God! Greg! What’s happened to you?’ She knelt down and hugged him, but he didn’t respond. Then she shook him, crying and calling out his name.
Kishi was standing behind her mother. She felt numb. Was that really her father? Was he really dead? She’d miss her A Level psychology tomorrow morning. Oh God!
‘What’s going on?’
It was Ryan, her twelve year old brother. He’d been in his room playing on his Xbox; they’d forgotten about him.
‘What’s wrong with dad?’ he asked. ‘And why’s mum crying?’
‘Dad’s been stabbed,’ Kishi answered him. It was as if someone else had said those words.
Ryan looked at her as if she were pulling his leg. ‘Don’t talk stupid.’
Her mother stood up. There was blood all over the front of her beige blouse. Her father didn’t move. ‘Come inside you two,’ her mother said, trying to shepherd them back towards the house.
‘Is dad not coming?�
� Kishi asked.
‘No, love,’ her mum said.
‘Dad?’ she called to him. ‘Dad, get up. Mum’s made your favourite – stew and dumplings.’
‘Come on, love,’ her mum said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. ‘Your dad can’t come with us now.’
She shook herself free of her mother’s embrace and knelt down on the freezing pavement next to her father. Touching her dad’s cold hand, the truth of his death spread up her arm like a virus and made her eyes flood with tears. I love you dad. You’re the best dad in the whole world. What am I going to do without you? She squeezed his hand. He couldn’t be dead. Things like this only happen to other people, not to them. Then she felt strong hands, like her fathers, lifting her up.
‘Come along, Kishi,’ Mr Mayhew said. ‘Your father wouldn’t have wanted you to freeze to death out here in your nightdress.’
She went along meekly.
Just then the ambulance arrived, followed by a police car, both with flashing lights. Heads began to appear around net curtains, but no one came out - it was too cold.
‘You take the children inside, Debbie,’ Mr Mayhew said. ‘I’ll deal with things out here.’
‘Thank you, Harry,’ she managed to say.
Kishi followed her mum and Ryan inside. The smell from the kitchen reminded her she was starving. I shouldn’t still be hungry after my dad has been killed, should I? What’s wrong with me?
***
After finding no carotid pulse or pupil reaction to the light from his pen torch, Mortimore Strange closed his emergency box and stood up. He had dealt with enough of these knifings in the three years he’d been a paramedic to realise that it was now a murder crime scene and he should leave the body where it lay. Although he could have pronounced the man dead himself, the law stipulated that a qualified doctor must perform the task.
A policewoman came up and stood behind him. ‘I’m PC Mary Richards from Cheshunt Police Station,’ she said. ‘Is he dead?’
He could see by her fresh face and the way she kept looking around that Mary Richards was new. He was surprised at how small she was. He was six foot, but her eyes barely reached his shoulders. ‘Yep, although officially I’m not supposed to say that. Died of a knife wound to the heart.’ He wondered if she was single. Maybe it was the blue canvas trousers she wore as part of her police uniform, but he thought her hips looked a bit wide. Beggars couldn’t be too choosy though, and he was definitely a beggar. He hadn’t been with another woman since his girlfriend, Babs, had got tired of his shift work and thrown him out six months ago.
‘Who is supposed to say he’s dead, then?’ Mary Richards asked.
‘A doctor.’
‘Is one coming?’
‘No. We take him to the Accident & Emergency at King George Hospital in Goodmayes. A doctor will pronounce him DOA there and fill out a death certificate.’
‘Dead on Arrival?’
‘You learned something while you were in training, then, Mary Richards?’
Mary Richards smiled.
She had good teeth, clear bright eyes and wore her long dark hair in a ponytail. If he was going to ask her out, now was the time to do it. His heart rate increased. ‘Would you like to go out for a meal sometime?’
‘Sometime? Is that a new day they’ve invented and added to the week between Sunday and Monday?’
It was Mortimore’s turn to smile and he did. He had his foot in the door, but before he could close the deal a grey-haired old man interrupted him.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Yes?’ PC Richards said, turning towards the man.
‘Harry Mayhew. I saw what happened. I live across the road at number 32. Mr Taylor was a neighbour. Are you going to cover him up?’
‘It’s a crime scene, Sir. We have to wait for the scene of crime officers to arrive and secure the area.’
‘Yes, of course,’ Mayhew said. He was wearing a vest, shirt and a sleeveless cardigan, and the cold was making him shiver. ‘I only popped out to close the gate.’
‘What did you see, Mr…?’ Mary Richards asked, pulling out her notebook and pen.
‘Mayhew… Harold Mayhew. Greg… Mr Taylor. . . was walking up the hill when a teenager wearing a hooded coat stabbed him as they passed each other.’
‘Would you be able to recognise the teenager again?’
‘No. As I said, he had a hood covering his face. I was across the road. I’m all in favour of the council saving money, but these orange streetlights are useless for seeing anything. I’m not even sure it was a teenager; it could have been a man. I just… I got the impression it was a teenager, but…’
‘And you saw this person stab Mr Taylor?’
‘Well no, but after the boy had walked past, Mr Taylor fell to the pavement. Who else could it have been? Greg didn’t stab himself, did he?’
‘Then what did you do?’
‘Well, I went and knocked for Debbie… Mrs Taylor, and while I was there I used their phone to call for you two.’
‘You didn’t come and see if Mr Taylor was alive or dead?’
‘Well no… I mean… I’m not trained in first aid or anything like that… I was an accountant… retired now. I thought the best thing to do was to get his wife and call the emergency services.’
‘I’m sure you did the right thing, Mr Mayhew.’
‘Thank you, officer. Very kind. This is all terribly dreadful. It used to be a nice neighbourhood you know, but now… well… it’s the immigrants. I blame the government. They’ve got no education, no skills and no jobs, but they still let them in. And…’
‘Thank you for your help, Mr Mayhew,’ Constable Richards said. ‘You look as though you’re freezing. I would go home and get warm. If there’s anything else we need to ask you, we know where to find you.’
‘Yes, I am a bit cold. I’ll go home if you’re sure? Will someone look after Debbie and the children?’
‘Don’t worry, Mr Mayhew. Someone will look after them.’
Chapter Two
Parish realised he had “mug” written on his forehead.
‘Holidays, sickness, poor recruitment strategies, lack of quality candidates and global warming has meant that I’ve got no detective inspectors left,’ the tall, stick-like Chief Superintendent Walter Day had said to him an hour ago. ‘You’re it, Detective Sergeant Parish. Get out there and solve your first murder. You’ll be applying for promotion before too long, and if you don’t make a dog’s dinner of this case, I’ll give you a good write up. Think of it as on-the-job training.’
Originally a working-class lad from Barnet, Walter Day had risen through the ranks to reach his current position, and was proud to tell his tale. He had no family and his wife had died of breast cancer three years ago. Now, with eighteen months left until retirement, he had come to the end of the road in more ways than one. Parish, like most of the station, knew the Chief had recently been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and some sick bastard in Vice had opened a book on the date of his likely demise. With chemotherapy and regular radiotherapy sessions at King George Hospital making him look like a walking corpse, Parish wondered whether the Chief would even reach the end of the month.
‘On my own?’
‘You’ll report directly to me. I want an emailed update at the end of every day, and pop in and see me at eight fifteen each morning. I’ll deal with the press. You solve the case. For all intents and purposes you’ll be a DI, but without the rank or the pay – budget constraints unfortunately.’
He had no idea how ‘global warming’ affected the number of DIs at Hoddesdon Police Station, but he wasn’t about to argue with the Chief. A chance to be in charge of a murder investigation and show what he could do would give him an edge in the promotion lottery. This was an opportunity to get his nose in front. He was a lean mean thirty-six and had been a DS for seven years. It was about time he got his shot at the big time.
‘Which detectives have you allocated me, Sir?’
‘Well, here
’s the thing, Parish - I don’t have any. DI Paterson has got one on the Bingley House murders; DI Mullins has taken another two to investigate the death of the MP’s wife. Then there’s one on training, two on long-term sick that we can’t seem to get rid of or replace, and another four on maternity leave. I’m sorry to have to land this on you, Sergeant, but it’s only another knifing, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to solve.’
The Chief had left the squad room before Parish could think of a suitable response. He heard one of the secretaries sniggering behind him, but when he turned round they both looked as if rock cakes wouldn’t melt in their mouths.
***
It was five past seven when he climbed out of the three year old Ford Mondeo he’d haggled from the car pool and headed towards the small female constable talking to a paramedic outside 29, Ralston Drive. There was also a paper-suited SOCO collecting evidence within the yellow demarcation tape of the crime scene. Well, he hoped there was evidence. Some DNA pointing directly to the killer would be good, he thought.
‘Constable…?’ God, she was young. He wondered if they were recruiting straight out of school.
‘Richards, Sir.’
‘Well, Constable Richards, I’m DS Jed Parish from Hoddesdon Police Station.’ Her tiny hand nearly got lost in his bear paw when he shook it. ‘Are you sure you’re old enough to wear that uniform, Richards?’
‘I was twenty-one last week.’
He shook his head. ‘Okay, what have you got for me?’