Death Count: A Kat Munro Thriller (The Kat Munro Thrillers Book 1)

by SL Beaumont

  “Come,” a commanding voice called from inside.

  Adam turned the knob and entered a small, well-proportioned corner office. Bay windows overlooked the two street frontages of the building. A large wooden desk dominated the room, and low bookshelves lined one wall.

  “Jackson.” The man in his mid-fifties behind the desk was dressed in the uniform of a colonel. His short-cropped hair was flecked with grey, and his eyes, behind wire-rimmed glasses, were intelligent and alert.

  “Sir.” Adam came to attention and saluted. Old habits died hard, and Colonel Wilson had been his commanding officer in Afghanistan seven years earlier.

  Wilson extended his hand across the desk, and Adam walked forward and shook it.

  “Thanks for coming,” Wilson said, indicating with a wave of his hand for Adam to sit in one of two visitor chairs.

  Adam sat down, glancing at the framed photo of an attractive smiling woman on the corner of the desk. “How is Mrs. Wilson?”

  “Very well, I’ll tell her that you were asking after her,” Wilson said. He paused. “Thank you for coming so quickly. I have a lead on Jake.”

  Adam sat forward in his seat. “After all this time? How?”

  “You will recall the guesthouse where McCall was staying when he disappeared?”

  Adam nodded. “The landlady contacted the police after a week when he never returned.”

  “That’s right, and when questioned, she had no idea what his movements were that weekend, as she was away,” Wilson reminded him, although it was unnecessary. Adam knew every aspect of McCall’s case backwards. His best mate had disappeared off the face of the Earth two years earlier.

  “Don’t tell me that she has miraculously remembered something?” Adam said, unable to keep the dubious tone out of his voice.

  Wilson shook his head. “No, but her daughter has just returned from spending two years on a working holiday in Australia. She left the UK a few days before we realised that McCall was missing. She and her mother must have been discussing McCall, and the daughter remembers him asking about local attractions within walking distance, including a nearby manor house. The mother contacted me, thought it might be useful.”

  “Have you interviewed the daughter?” Adam asked.

  “I spoke with her over the phone from Australia briefly at the time. Adam, I was hoping that you’d have time to drive out and see her. Take another look at the area while you’re there. I’ve already checked into the manor house. It’s owned by a London barrister, William Huntly-Tait, a well-respected member of the profession by all accounts. I’d like to know what else Jake was doing before he disappeared.”

  “I’ll see what I can find out,” Adam said.

  “Be discreet. No unwanted attention,” Wilson cautioned.

  Adam nodded.

  Wilson slid a piece of paper across the desk. “Here are the daughter’s details.”

  Adam picked up the paper and read it. Amanda Harding and a phone number. He stood, folding the piece of paper and slipped it into the front pocket of his jeans.

  “I’m attending a Valkyries’ fundraising picnic at Bletchley Park this Saturday. Why don’t you come, meet up with some of the old unit, and let me know what you find out?” Wilson suggested.

  Adam nodded.

  ***

  Adam rode the Underground to his rented flat after leaving Wilson’s office, going inside only long enough to grab his car keys. He wrinkled his nose at the smell wafting from the overflowing rubbish bin as he scooped the keys up from the end of the kitchen bench, making a mental note to attend to that later. Casting a disparaging glance around the tiny, gloomy flat, he pulled the door shut behind him and jogged back down the stairwell to the street. He dug into his pocket for the piece of paper with Amanda Harding’s number. He called her as he walked towards the narrow side street where he’d parked his car several days earlier, cursing the lack of affordable parking spaces in central London. She answered on the first ring.

  “Mandy here.”

  “Mandy, DS Adam Jackson. Your mother spoke with Colonel Wilson this morning regarding the disappearance of one of her guests, Jake McCall.”

  “Yes, she said someone would most likely call me.”

  “I was hoping that I could come and see you. Are you free this afternoon?” Adam said.

  “Sure. I’m staying at the guest house until I get a job. Do you have the address?”

  “Yeah, I do. I’ll see you in about an hour.”

  Adam located his car, a restored 1976 Ford Capri, several blocks away from the flat. He was soon driving down the A3 tapping the steering wheel in time to a rock anthems playlist, as his mind revisited the details surrounding the disappearance of his friend. In the last two years, Jake’s bank accounts and phone hadn’t been accessed, but neither had his body been found. It was as though he’d vanished into thin air. The police case had gone cold, and a thorough investigation by Wilson’s office had produced no additional information.

  Just over an hour later, he slowed the car as he entered Cobham High Street. Gloria Harding’s guesthouse was on the edge of the village, where the rows of houses gave way to swathes of farmland. Adam pulled to a stop in front of a detached red brick two-storey house. A shingle swinging in the light breeze announced the Cobham Cottage Guesthouse. Adam’s shoes crunched on the gravel as he approached the front door and rang the doorbell. He heard footsteps before the door was swung open by a tanned young woman wearing sprayed-on jeans and a white t-shirt.

  “G’day,” she said. “You must be DS Jackson. I’m Mandy.”

  Adam showed her his warrant card, and she invited him inside, leading him through the hallway and into a sitting room crammed with floral patterned sofas and armchairs. Framed watercolours of single blooms covered the walls, and overflowing vases of flowers sat on side tables throughout the room. Adam looked around, trying, and failing to place Jake in this room.

  “We call this the floral room,” Mandy said, noting his appraisal. “It’s a bit over the top, right?”

  “It’s very, ah… colourful,” Adam said with a grin.

  Mandy flopped down on one of the sofas and tucked her legs beneath her. “I’m not sure how much I can help you,” she said,

  Adam sat opposite her. “Perhaps just take me through what you remember of your last conversation with Jake.”

  “Sure, um, it was over breakfast. Mum had gone away for the weekend to visit my grandmother, and I was looking after things. It was early, perhaps seven a.m., and Jake was the only one in the dining room. He said he was looking into his family history.”

  Adam nodded.

  “Was that true?” she asked, tilting her head to one side and studying him. “’Cos it’s funny that the army and the police are looking into his disappearance, after all this time.”

  “He was in the army when he disappeared, and missing persons cases get reviewed by the police every so often,” Adam said. “So, where was he planning to go that day?”

  “I don’t remember, sorry.” Amanda frowned, looking thoughtful. “Although, perhaps he was planning to go to the local airfield because I overheard him on his phone making an appointment. Did he fly?”

  Adam shook his head. “Do you mean Wisley Airport?”

  “No, he mentioned something about Surrey Flats. Wisley’s been closed for years,” Mandy said.

  “Do you remember anything else from your conversation with him that morning?”

  “Only that he asked how long it would take to walk to South Hill Manor, which was odd, given what happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The son had a party there that night. I don’t know the details as I was on a plane to Sydney the next day, but there was a car accident, and someone died. Mum said it was all hushed up at the time – a drunk driver, according to the local gossips.”

  ***

  Adam left the guesthouse and drove further out of the village. The GPS on his phone indicated that South Hill Manor was four miles outsi
de the town, and the Surrey Flats Aerodrome was in the opposite direction. A visit there would have to wait. The River Mole meandered alongside the road for the first two miles. Adam spied several anglers perched along its banks before the river disappeared from view as the lane entered dense shaded woodland. The road emerged again at the top of the rise, looking down on the green rolling countryside.

  Adam slowed the car when a large manor house came into view, nestled back from the road on the gentle slope of a hill. Behind its square Georgian façade, the roof rose steeply. Two wings extended from either side of the central part of the residence. The house, partly hidden behind a tall brick fence, was accessible through imposing black wrought iron gates. Adam pulled to a stop in a farm gateway, grabbed his phone, and snapped several photos of the property.

  Voices drew his attention, and he swivelled in his seat to watch a trio of walkers climb over a stile and cross the road behind him. They continued along a public footpath, which ran along one side of the manor’s perimeter wall.

  Adam pulled his car further off the road and climbed out, locking it, before following the walkers. The footpath continued uphill alongside the tall brick wall for several hundred meters before disappearing into woodland covering the hillside. He took several more photos before returning to the front gates and peering through towards the house. A long gravel driveway extended straight from the gateway before curving around a circular green lawn to the front entrance. The rose garden running along the fence was well maintained as though no weed dared grow there. Adam was aware of security cameras tracking his every move. He found an intercom set into the brick wall beside the gate and pushed the button.

  “Yes,” a disembodied male voice answered straightaway.

  “Is Mr. Huntly-Tait available?”

  “I’m afraid he is in London. Can I help you?”

  “No, I will contact him there.”

  “Can I say who called?”

  Adam thought for a moment. “No,” he said, turning on his heel and walking back towards the road.

  Behind him, he heard rapid movement in the driveway’s gravel and turned as two large Doberman dogs rushed at the gate snarling. Adam sauntered across the road back to his car. He climbed in and rolled his shoulders to shake off the feeling of being watched, before reversing out of the farm gateway and driving away.

  Not for the first time when on surveillance did he wish that he didn’t own such a distinctive car. He soon dismissed that ridiculous notion and drove on past lush fields of wheat and barley, following the directions on his GPS for a road that would link up with the A3 to take him back to London.

  Hearing the whine of an airplane passing low overhead, he leaned forward to look out through the top of the windscreen. He spotted a small fixed-wing aircraft climbing as though it had just taken off. He looked across the fields to his right and saw a single hangar-like shed on a side road. Curious, he turned and drove along a narrow lane bordered by hedgerows and pulled to a stop beneath a sign which read ‘Private Property. Trespassers will be Prosecuted.’

  He got out of the car and looked across a field of grazing sheep to where a lone airplane stood beside the tarmac of a short runway next to a small corrugated iron hangar. The word ‘fertiliser’ stood out on the side of the bags stacked in front of the building. It seemed the airfield was used for aerial topdressing.

  Adam started the car again and turned it around, continuing his journey back to London as he thought over what he’d learned. Something that Mandy Harding had said tugged at the back of his mind, and several miles further on, he pulled into a service stop and put a call through to the incident room on his mobile.

  A male voice answered. “It's Julian, how can I help?”

  “Hey, Julian, can you find me the details of a car accident two years ago around May twenty-fifth near Cobham in Surrey? There was a death.”

  “Sure, hang on.”

  Adam could hear the man typing on his computer keyboard.

  “Okay, it looks like a single-car accident. They lost control on a country lane and rolled.” He let out a soft whistle. “Fancy car; Porsche 911 Cabriolet. One death, one seriously injured, the driver escaped injury. They’d come from a party at South Hill Manor. No charges were brought.”

  Chapter 7

  “That building never fails to impress me,” Shamira said as they climbed from the taxi on the north side of the Thames. She stood with her hands on her hips, soaking in the view across the river where floodlights coloured the entire Tate Modern frontage in a blue hue for the exhibition’s opening night. The imposing former Bankside Power Station on the South Bank of the Thames was given a new lease of life when the Tate Gallery trustees decided to develop the site as a space to house international modern and contemporary art. The architects and developers stripped the building of its giant turbines and electrical equipment but retained its steel and brick structure. White lights beamed from the narrow vertical windows facing the Thames, and the glass-enclosed top floor running the entire length of the building shone like a giant fluorescent bulb.

  Behind them, St. Paul’s Cathedral stood as it had for generations, iconic and reassuring, its white stone giving off an eerie glow in the twilight.

  “So is that why you insisted we get dropped here and walk over the Millennium Bridge?” Nathan said, joining Shamira, admiring the spectacle while straightening his suit jacket.

  “You Aussies catch on quick,” she teased, nudging him with her shoulder. Her beautiful red and gold dress glinted under the street lights.

  “It’s such an iconic London landmark now, although I guess it was throughout the twentieth century. I mean, that chimney must have dominated the skyline before the city skyscrapers took over,” he continued.

  Shamira nodded. “It was one of the first post-World War II structures that were part of London’s rebuild after the Blitz. Although I have to say, I love the new extension. It’s like someone dropped a giant deconstructed brick pyramid behind the building.”

  “If you two have finished your architectural love-fest, let’s go. It’s cold.” Kat shivered in her little black dress, which had long sleeves but did little to keep out the night chill. They started walking down the cobbled pathway of Peter’s Hill to the footbridge spanning the river. The edges of the bridge were lit with the same blue light as the Tate, in essence guiding the way.

  “You have to admit this is one of the best views in London,” Shamira said, pausing after they walked onto the Millennium Bridge. She hung on to the railing and sighed with contentment. Kat and Nathan followed her gaze. Across the river nestled next to the Tate Modern was the replica of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, its round black and white Tudor structure utterly unique in modern-day London. Further down the river past Southwark and London Bridges, the top of the twin towers of Tower Bridge could be seen. To the right, the modern, sleek glass skyscraper known as The Shard dominated the skyline.

  They continued walking, following a group of tourists and other opening night attendees, judging by their attire.

  “Thanks for getting us these tickets, Nate,” Shamira said. “I’ve never been to the opening night of an exhibition at the Tate Modern.”

  “No worries, mate. I know a guy who works for the PR company who runs these things, and he slipped them to me. Although I’m not sure that I understand contemporary art; give me a good watercolour any day.” he said.

  Kat smiled. “I know what you mean; it can be something of an acquired taste. I’m more interested that Capital Investment Partners are the major sponsors of this exhibition.”

  “I don’t expect any of them will be there, especially after Henry Smyth’s death,” Shamira said.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Kat replied. “The people that I met the other day weren’t the grieving type. If they consider this good for business, they’ll be here.”

  “Speaking of the other day, anything more on that threatening note you received?” Nate asked.

  Kat shook her head.


  “You need to be careful, mate, you’ve ruffled someone’s feathers,” he said.

  “You should tell DS Jackson,” Shamira said.

  “No, no.” Kat waved her hand, dismissing their concern. “It’s nothing to do with him.”

  They reached the end of the bridge, followed the ramp down to the Thames Walk, strolled along the waterfront to the Tate Modern entrance and joined a stream of people making their way down the wide ramp into Turbine Hall.

  The hall was impressive; long and narrow, with a high cathedral-like ceiling comprising glass panels. The walls retained their industrial concrete structure to remind visitors of the building’s original purpose. Waiters balancing trays of prosecco stood in a line at the bottom of the entrance ramp. Kat, Nathan, and Shamira relieved them of a glass each and joined the crowd, who were making their way deeper into the hall. Above them, giant metallic installations hung suspended. They stopped to look.

  “It’s supposed to be a modern take on Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’,” Shamira explained.

  Kat and Nathan tipped their heads back to study the tangle of broken, disjointed gold-coloured steel above their heads. Dark blue lighting along the roof meant that the glass ceiling virtually disappeared, and it was impossible to see where the roof ended, and the night sky began.

  “Hmm… I wonder what old Vincent would make of that. It looks like someone has spewed out shards of scrap metal,” Nathan said, screwing his nose.

  “It’s actually very clever,” Kat said.

  Shamira looked at her in surprise. “Ooh, we might make a modern art fan out of you yet.”

  Kat smiled. “I wouldn’t hold your breath.” She scanned the hall, her gaze landing on a raised platform in the centre towards which the other guests were gravitating.

  “Hey, look at this,” Nate said, drawing their attention to a free-standing banner listing the names of the evening’s minor sponsors. “Isn’t that…”