DARK MURDER a gripping detective thriller full of suspense

by Helen H. Durrant

  “You’re learning, Sergeant, picking up my habits.” Greco revealed a glimmer of humour for a moment. “But we have to be realistic. She went missing at more or less the same time and has been dumped in the same place.”

  He turned and looked towards the road. Natasha Barrington was late and he could do with getting off; Matilda needed picking up. He was learning fast the restrictions children could put on a job. He just wanted to get suited up and get on. Once he had a good look at the body, then he’d know for sure. After that he’d wait for the post-mortem in the morning. He’d get Matilda and go clear his head.

  He looked at the landscape around him. He used to enjoy running. If it wasn’t so wet and muddy, the canalside would be a good place to run. When he’d lived in Norfolk he’d jog along the quiet country lanes or around a disused aerodrome near his home, round and round, thinking about nothing in particular. It cleared his head like nothing else and then he could think, think properly.

  “Inspector!” Natasha Barrington called out as she locked her car. “A suit for both of you and I’ve brought the cavalry with me.” She gestured at the people carrier that had pulled up with a CSI team in it.

  She was suited up and ready to go with the voice recorder primed. “Another one.” She frowned. “I’ll have a look, give you my initial findings and do the PM tomorrow.”

  Greco nodded; that was fine by him.

  “Female, roughly forty-five to fifty,” she said, kneeling down. “Life hasn’t treated her well,” she noted grimly, peeling the sheet away, “old before her time.”

  That seemed to be something a lot of the women in this place had in common. Greco moved next to her and hunkered down. The eyes were missing. That confirmed it. “Same killer as before, and it is Rose,” he told Quickenden.

  “Same killer, it might be, but a different method, Inspector.”

  The doctor unwrapped the sheet and stared at the abdomen.

  “What’s that?” Speedy asked, shocked.

  “Most of her large and small intestines, Sergeant. But horrific as it looks, this wasn’t the cause of death. This was.” She pointed to the neck. “Her throat’s been cut. She’ll have sustained a huge blood loss. It’s difficult to say without proper facilities, but I’d say her bowel was removed bit by bit. Death, I would estimate sometime yesterday.”

  Greco shuddered.

  Whoever had taken Rose had wanted her to suffer before he killed her. But why was this murder so different from that of Brenda Hirst? Her death had been quick, but Rose must have been imprisoned somewhere.

  “Inspector!” A voice called from further along the bank. It was one of the CSI team.

  “We’ve found this.”

  He was holding up a potato peeler in an evidence bag. Greco went over for a closer look. The blade was covered in dried blood. He inhaled deeply. It looked like they had found the implement that had been used to take her eyes. A break — if it yielded any evidence such as DNA other than Rose’s, or even fingerprints.

  “I’ll know much more after the PM,” Natasha Barrington told them. “And that won’t get done until tomorrow I’m afraid. Everything else will go to Professor Batho.” She got up and pushed down the hood of the suit. “Thought anymore about my offer?” She smiled.

  Greco looked at her. Natasha Barrington was a good-looking woman but he hadn’t even considered dating since his split with Suzy. But if he was to put his toe in the water again, she was a possibility. He knew his failings only too well. And to counteract them he needed something else apart from work. Suzy had always said so and all the medical advice he’d had over the years agreed. So should he take her up on the offer? But was he even capable of having another relationship with a woman? Suzy had been his life, both she and Matilda. He’d have to give it more thought, but not here. This wasn’t the right time.

  “When all this is over.” He tried to smile. “When I’m embroiled in a case it takes me over and this is a bad one. I’m not good company, too fixated on catching the perpetrator.”

  “You’re young, Stephen,” she said, using his first name for the first time. “You have to learn to let go, live a little. I’m not going to give up. I’ll ask again,” she promised, tapping his arm.

  “Where to now, sir?” Quickenden asked.

  “We’ll call it a day and see what the PM throws up tomorrow.”

  “The peeler is intriguing, sir. Why leave it?”

  “We have to ask if it was left by mistake or on purpose. Either way, it throws up more questions than answers. We’ll discuss it tomorrow.”

  Greco needed to leave now to pick up Matilda from Grace’s mum. His daughter was happy enough with the arrangement but he didn’t want to push it.

  “I’ll drop you at the station and get straight off,” he told Quickenden. He knew his sergeant would have no argument with that.

  * * *

  “I thought we could send out for a pizza,” Greco told his daughter. “A bit of a treat, and we could have ice cream for afters.”

  Matilda Greco jumped in the air and clapped her hands.

  “Can I look at the pictures and choose?”

  Greco handed her the menu that had been pushed through his door earlier that week and left her perusing it while he checked his emails. Arturo had contacted him again. He’d had another look at his own family history records and found something. The man Greco surmised to be his Italian ancestor, Lorenzo Greco, had left a wife and children behind when he’d absconded. The problem was Arturo didn’t know anything else. What Greco needed was proof that the Lorenzo who left Milan was the same man who married in Kent in 1847 calling himself Laurence Greco. The man from Kent had no past. He didn’t appear on the 1841 census and there was no UK record of his birth. He sent him a thank-you email and went back to Matilda.

  “I want the cheesy one with tomatoes,” she told him, “and can I have fries and a drink?”

  Greco didn’t usually send out for food, and if he did it was unlikely to be food of this variety but he’d had a hard day and it was a treat for Matilda.

  “Okay, Tillyflop, I’ll ring the man and get it sorted.” But before he had the chance, the front doorbell rang.

  It was Suzy.

  Greco was both surprised and relieved to see her. “You’re back quick. I thought you’d be at least a week.” He smiled.

  “I couldn’t stand it a minute longer,” she replied, shaking her head. “I’d forgotten what it was like, what they were like, and with dad being ill, it was even worse.”

  Greco wasn’t sure what she meant.

  “Mummy!” Matilda said rushing to meet her. “We’re having pizza. Daddy’s going to ring the man.”

  “Not like you, Stephen,” Suzy said giving him a quizzical look. “What happened to all that guff about healthy eating?”

  “A long hard day happened.”

  “Can I stay and have some pizza with you both? Perhaps you could open a bottle of that expensive wine of yours. I see you’re stocked up,” she said nodding at the wine rack in the kitchen.

  “She can, can’t she, Daddy? Then we can all watch telly together.”

  He nodded his agreement. “But if you drink, you’re not going to be able to drive home,” he reminded her.

  “You’re never off duty are you?” She shook her head. “But it’s easily sorted. I’ll stay here with the two of you. You don’t mind, do you?”

  He wasn’t sure. Where would she sleep for a start? There were only two bedrooms. Suzy was behaving oddly. Since their divorce she had kept him very much at arm’s length. Apart from meeting up to take Matilda for the weekend or discuss her welfare they’d had precious little to do with each other. Something was going on but he’d no idea what.

  “You look troubled, Stephen. You need to lighten up.”

  He pursed his lips. Twice within a few hours a woman had said that or something like it to him. “This isn’t like you, this casual approach to being with me. Has something happened? Only you’re making me nervous,” he whi
spered to her.

  “Get those pizzas ordered first,” she insisted.

  Suzy took Matilda into the bathroom to get her organised for bed. “You can have your bath then get your pyjamas on. By then the food will have arrived.”

  Once the child was splashing in the bath, she returned to talk to him. “I’ve made a huge mistake, ruined everything and particularly the two of us,” she began.

  Greco looked at her. Ordinarily Suzy didn’t say things like that, and where their relationship was concerned, blame for its failure had been firmly laid at his feet.

  “Are you worried your parents won’t cope, is that it?”

  “It’s not them.” She flopped down on the sofa. “They always cope. My mother is a past master at dealing with everything life throws at her. They don’t need me; I just get in the way.”

  “So, the mistake? Enlighten me.”

  “You, me, us, Stephen.” She looked at him. “You can’t be happy with the way things have turned out either.”

  That much was true. The split and the trauma of the divorce had made him even more obsessed and introverted than usual.

  “You made all the running, Suzy. You wanted the divorce. You said exactly what you wanted and I went along with it, right down the line. You came here to Oldston. I just followed in your wake.”

  “Why, Stephen? Why did you follow me?”

  What did she expect him to say? “For Matilda of course.” He turned away from her penetrating gaze. It wasn’t strictly true and she could see right through him.

  “Are you sure that’s all it was? Are you sure you didn’t want to stay close to me?”

  “If I’d let you come alone, then you’d have had it all to cope with. You’d have had no one to help, to give you a break from the childcare. I thought you’d appreciate having me to lean on.” She was staring at him. What did she want? What did she expect him to say? “Look, Suzy, where’s all this coming from? I thought you were settled here, had the life you wanted. To be frank, I thought you’d come here because of some man you’d met,” he admitted.

  Now she was laughing at him. “A man! Stephen you don’t know how funny that is,” she told him, “and you call yourself a detective. Do you want to know the truth? It sounds ludicrous now,” she said with a light laugh. “It was my parents. I presumed you’d realise that.”

  Greco was confused. He thought he’d already worked all this out. Suzy had got bored and had found herself someone else, simple as that. Now apparently, that wasn’t the case at all.

  “You don’t look very pleased to learn that I was never unfaithful,” she said, sipping on the wine.

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then what is it? I don’t expect much but I thought you’d have more to say. Give me a smile at least,” she teased. “You’ve not gone and got yourself another woman, have you Stephen?” She waited. “You’ve only been here two minutes.”

  “No, of course not, don’t be stupid.”

  “It’s not stupid. You’re not bad-looking. I’ve seen the way women look at you. You’ve got a good job, youth on your side.”

  “Is Matilda okay?” He asked, checking his watch. “The food will be here any time and she’s been in there a while.”

  “She’s fine, she’s singing away, can’t you hear her? And don’t change the subject.”

  “What is it you want, Suzy?” He was going round in circles and didn’t know what to think, what to feel.

  “Look, we both know you have issues, the obsessive thing, but have you ever thought that I might have problems too?”

  “Issues?” He considered this for a moment. “I know I’m faulty, not professionally, I’m a good cop. But you know that I’ve always acknowledged that emotionally I’m different,” he watched her nod. “The obsessive thing is hard to beat, but I do try. I don’t enjoy being the way I am. What problems do you have, then?”

  “Claustrophobia, Stephen,” she told him pointedly. “Caused by my parent’s constant interfering, wanting to run my life, and hers,” she said, nodding at the bathroom. “I’d had enough and I couldn’t live like that anymore. Something had to change and that was down to me. I tried to talk to you but there was always the job and some case in the way. Do you have any idea how desperate I felt, Stephen? I had to cope with you, your OCD, my parents and their demands, Matilda and my job. I’m only one pair of hands and I couldn’t hack it. I was sinking on all fronts and no one even noticed.”

  “You should have said something.”

  She ignored that. “At first I thought I’d made a huge mistake in coming up here. To begin with it was too far away from everything I knew. But going back, just for that couple of days and spending time with my parents has made me see that the decision was the right one.”

  “So what’s the problem? Why the change towards me?”

  “The mistake I made was in leaving you, Stephen. I know that now and I want to see if we can put things right.”

  She’d put her cards on the table but he was still out of his depth. He’d had to learn to live without Suzy, to cope on his own. He didn’t like it much but he was getting there. Did he really want her back?

  “But why choose to live here of all places?” It was all he could think of to say.

  “One night after half a bottle of gin and even more wine, I stuck a pin in the map and here we all are.”

  He couldn’t say anything to that. It was just like her. Suzy was so different from him, vibrant, alive, and she took risks — it had been a big part of what made her attractive.

  “That’s no way to choose your new home.”

  “I know that now, but at the time it seemed perfectly reasonable. Just be grateful you’re not living in the north of Scotland.”

  She burst into laughter as the insanity of her actions hit home. “I’m a bloody fool; why didn’t you stop me?”

  “I didn’t know how to. But now I wish I had; things would be so very different.”

  “You don’t like it here, then?”

  “I’m still making my mind up,” he replied.

  “I’m sorry; I should never have done it. But I had to get away. I was going slowly mad. But I do regret the way things have turned out. She fell silent. “I was wrong to leave you, to wrench Matilda away like I did, and I want to put things right.”

  Chapter 15

  Thursday

  “Your luggage.” Daz handed Tanweer a small overnight bag. “The two bags will go in the boot but the rucksack will come on the coach with us. It’s got our disguises in it.”

  His friend nodded. “Who packed the bags?”

  Daz shrugged and moved away from the others in the queue. “Don’t stress, man, everything’s cool. We don’t need proper luggage — we’re not staying anywhere, remember?”

  “But we’re standing here with folk waiting for a coach — so if we’re not going with them, where are we going?”

  “Just act normal and keep your voice down. We’ll get off at the first stop — that’s a motorway services. We won’t get back on, and the coach will leave without us.”

  “Won’t they wonder where we got to?” Tanweer asked, doubtfully.

  “Yep, they’ll wonder, but there’s nothing they can do. After a set waiting time they’ll carry on without us.”

  “I don’t get it — why are we doing this?”

  “Look, Tan, you and me don’t have to get it. We’re being paid to follow instructions, being paid by Geegee, remember — so that’s what we do, okay?”

  Tan lit a cigarette, he needed to think. This was something big; it had to be. “You still haven’t said who packed the cases.”

  “Geegee did, and before you ask I don’t know what’s in them. I wasn’t there and I didn’t ask because I’d rather not know.”

  “He doesn’t transport his drugs this way. He doesn’t deal in volume for a start,” Tan told him as if he knew all about it.

  “Geegee could be into anything. I’ve no idea and I’d prefer to keep out of it.”
<
br />   “So where is it we’re supposed to be going on this coach trip we’re now part of?” Tan looked round at the other people waiting in the queue.

  “According to the tickets it’s a theatre break in London, to see a musical. Three nights. Actually the trip sounds quite good.” Daz laughed. “It’s the sort of thing my Stace would love to go on.”

  “He’s gone to a lot of trouble, hasn’t he? And given it’s Geegee we’re dealing with, that’s worrying.” Tan had no idea what was going on but it had to involve something really dodgy if that madman was behind it. And given the luggage had been packed for him — well, obvious wasn’t it. It was highly unlikely that his pyjamas were sitting in that case.

  It didn’t take long for the queue to get bigger. Some folk had kids with them, excited kids jumping all over the place and clamouring for sweets from the bus station shop.

  “The sooner this fucking coach gets here the better.” Daz nudged Tan in irritation. “I could be putting my time to much better use.”

  “Hey — less of the swearing, there are kids here and I certainly don’t want my daughter listening to what comes out of your foul mouth.”

  The little girl had been staring at Daz’s expensive trainers and the man moved her so that she was standing behind his back while he tackled the two boys.

  “Sorry, mate,” Daz replied sheepishly.

  “I’m not your mate. Any more of it and I’m telling the driver. I’ll get the pair of you banned before we even get started — got it, you idiot!”

  His face was flushed with annoyance. “The youth of today can’t open their mouths without a torrent of swear words in every other sentence,” he told another man.

  Tan knew that Daz had a short fuse and was itching to retaliate. At any other time he’d have lost his rag completely and lamped the bloke, but not this time. Tan was poking him in the back, urging him to back off.

  “We’re supposed to keep a low profile, you said. Now the whole fucking coach will have us clocked,” he hissed. “Look — we’re both sorry, it won’t happen again.” Tan tried to smile at their accuser.