Dark Game_A gripping crime thriller that will have you hooked!

by Rachel Lynch

  DC Hide drove as always, so Kelly could make calls and update her computer. Thank God for HOLMES. It did the work of a hundred detectives, but most importantly it used dynamic reasoning, and nothing was left out. Just one word could flag up a whole bunch of leads. Kelly typed in Harry Chase’s name. She knew him from the investigation into Lottie, and hearing his name in relation to Colin Day had thrown her, he was cropping up more and more. They hadn’t unravelled all of his business affairs yet, but they already knew about HCCD Art and Chase and Chase Accountants. She was looking for any links to Colin Day or any of his business affairs, such as Tomb Day. Chase hadn’t killed Lottie, they knew that much – he’d been in prison at the time – but that didn’t mean he hadn’t arranged it. If these guys were partying together, it might not only be Day running the show. It also satisfied a niggle in Kelly’s mind: her hunch that Lottie had been abducted to order.

  She opened the email that had arrived from Ted Wallis and looked at the scan of the calling card: flower. It suggested innocence, but that was all. If Colin Day was handing them out to friends, how much did he know about it? Was Anushka Ivanov a flower? Was Lottie?

  The next name she entered into the computer was typed with trepidation. Barry Crawley was an affable giant, always quick with banter and terrible jokes, but he had been associated with Elite Escapes and she dreaded what else she might unearth about the man she’d once wanted as her father-in-law. She typed his name and three offences popped up. She’d missed a lot in the time she’d been in London and she wondered why her mother had never told her. How had the gossip not reached her?

  Barry Crawley was on the sex offenders’ register. He’d been accused of sexual harassment at Crawley Haulage, attempted rape and possession of indecent pictures. In the two former cases, the women had dropped charges. In the latter, he’d received a caution, which probably meant that he’d been able to prove it was someone else’s computer. All three offences had occurred over ten years ago, but this kind of information stayed on the PNC forever.

  ‘Jesus,’ she said.

  ‘What, guv?’

  ‘Barry Crawley is on the sex offenders’ list.’

  Hide made no comment. ‘We’re here, guv.’

  Kelly was shell-shocked.

  ‘Guv?’

  ‘Sorry, Emma. Right, let’s go.’

  They walked up the well-kept drive to Christine Day’s house and rang the bell. Christine took her time coming to the door; Kelly wondered if she read the Daily Mail.

  ‘Detective,’ she said briskly when she eventually appeared. ‘I thought I might be seeing you again. My daughter read the vile stuff this morning and rang to tell me. I’m appalled. I’ll take legal action.’

  ‘Actually, Christine, that’s not why we’re here. I’m calling about something else. May we come in?’

  ‘Of course.’ Christine wheeled backwards so the two detectives could enter. She led them into a reception room and invited them to sit down.

  ‘Christine, this is DC Hide. Our enquiries have taken us in some quite unexpected directions. Have you ever had dealings with a company called Elite Escapes?’

  ‘Not that I know of. It sounds very grand, though.’

  ‘Did you ever attend any parties at this property, organised by your husband?’ Kelly showed Christine a photo of the Borrowdale mansion.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know a man called Harry Chase?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Kelly noticed that Christine had a smile on her face that hadn’t changed since they’d started talking, odd for a woman who’d just had her dirty laundry washed in public.

  ‘What about Teresa Joliffe?’

  ‘No. Look, Detective, I’ve got a very busy day ahead. I—’

  ‘Barry Crawley?’ Kelly interrupted her. She knew in her gut that the woman sitting innocently before her was anything but, and she was disappointed at her suspected involvement; she’d felt genuinely sorry for her. ‘What about “flower”?’

  Now Christine’s expression changed slightly.

  ‘Let me help you out. It’s a service offering underage girls for sex.’ Kelly had no idea if this was true, but it didn’t hurt to ruffle Christine’s feathers.

  ‘I think you should leave now, Detective. Unless you have a warrant.’ Christine wheeled towards the door. ‘You’ve put us all through enough. I’ll be contacting my husband’s lawyer.’

  ‘Is that the same lawyer that got Barry Crawley off a rape charge?’ Again, it was a guess, but possible.

  Christine Day wheeled angrily out of the room and waited by the door for the officers to leave.

  ‘Do you know where all your husband’s money came from, Christine?’

  ‘If you’ve got no warrant, get out of my house.’

  Kelly knew she could have handled it better, and perhaps got some information out of Christine by being tactful, but she was shaking with anger. She hoped one day to return to Christine Day’s house armed with a warrant, and wipe the fixed grin off her plastic face.

  ‘I don’t envy Darren Beckett, guv,’ was all DC Hide said.

  Chapter 42

  Marko knocked over a chair violently.

  ‘That’s Teresa’s territory. Get her here now.’

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  Sasha left, and Marko strutted up and down. His bodyguards didn’t dare make a sound. Too many loose ends had unravelled and he was nervous. His biggest problem was his own lack of judgement. He should never have trusted Colin Day. Respected philanthropist, charity organiser and all-round decent good guy, Day had been the perfect front, but he’d got complacent and had cut corners.

  ‘I’ve got friends in high places, Marko. You don’t need to worry about me,’ he had said. Marko had watched Day carefully, and as time went on, he’d observed that he fancied himself much more important than he was. He also had a loose mouth. Marko had given him freebies to try and keep him quiet.

  Day had brought in business, but it was slowing down and Marko had moved on to other clients with more promise and more finesse. Alarm bells went off when Day suggested a party at his own home. It was a step too far, and it showed that the old man misunderstood what was at stake. The big fish in his little pond had got ahead of himself.

  And that led to Marko’s other problem: Darren Beckett. Marko suspected Day of dealing with Beckett directly. And now Darren’s ugly drug-ridden face was all over the news, and worse, the coppers had him. Marko should have put a knife in him when he had the chance. The three fighters were worth thousands in bets.

  Marko was running out of chances to regain control. He’d never worried about the police before, but now they were too close. He needed the girl. There was nothing he could do but wait.

  He went over in his head what Beckett knew. There were three types of people, and they could be distinguished by how they reacted to the law. The first type saw it as a mere obstacle, the second saw it as an opportunity and the third was simply honest. Beckett was far from honest, but Marko was unsure if he’d crack under pressure; he was English, after all. In England, you were either law-abiding or you were not, and the two rarely met. It made things easier in some ways, but in others not. Not one case of trafficking had been tried successfully in an English court; there was too much red tape, too much paperwork and too many do-gooders defending the human rights of the people trying to unravel the fabric of British society.

  It was what had attracted Marko here in the first place, and he wasn’t the only one. Only in Britain could a man stand on a street corner and preach hate while the coppers looked on. It was laughable. But now he was perilously close to risking everything.

  He considered calling off tonight, but there was a lot of money at stake and he had to be there in person. Sasha could handle Teresa.

  He grabbed his coat and left the grubby apartment. It was time to move. Beckett had been here, and if he was shrewd, he would give the police the address to try and save himself, but he’d regret it. The tin shed at the sl
ate mine had been cleaned up, but the bodies were still there, and it hadn’t been difficult to make sure he was linked to them. Sasha had seen to that by keeping hold of Beckett’s bloody clothes after the murders of the young manager and cleaner, and leaving them with the corpses. He had also returned the dead men’s IDs, to speed things up.

  Marko used a pay-as-you-go mobile to call in the tip-off, then dismantled the phone and threw it into a waste bin in the car park. He got into his car. He was alone; his bodyguards were still upstairs taking care of the flat. They’d sterilise the whole place.

  The roads were clear and the only ambient light came from the moon. He drove to the usual spot and Curtis appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Curtis,’ said Marko.

  ‘Marko,’ said Curtis.

  ‘Why’s the lorry still here?’

  ‘Driver is cleaning sick off the floor.’

  ‘Did he have to do it here?’

  ‘It’s dark, I didn’t think it was a problem.’

  Inside the warehouse, eight people sat huddled on the floor. Marko cared not that the journey across Europe had left them exhausted, terrified and maddened by thirst. Nor did he care that they’d been tricked.

  Two children were among them. They were protected by women who could have been their mothers, but this fact didn’t concern Marko. He nodded, and the children were taken away. He had buyers for both. The two women fought and struggled but were no match for Curtis’s brothers, or their baseball bats. They knew they were beaten, and a bat handle shoved under a chin, accompanied by a menacing glare, was all it took to subdue them. Marko was continually surprised by these feeble-minded people who thought that entering another country illegally in the middle of the night was somehow a good start to their future.

  He watched as Curtis’s brothers gagged the women one by one and secured their hands behind their backs with cable ties. Even if they kicked and screamed, he’d still be able to sell them on one way or another. If they didn’t shut up of their own accord, then a shot in the arm would do it, and at least they’d be good for one of his many houses where girls were drugged and tied to a bed.

  After they were secured, Marko surveyed his goods. They were all suitable, and he nodded to Curtis and his brothers to ready them for the next leg of their journey. The women were wrapped in blankets one at a time and loaded into a van. Marko smoked a cigarette while he waited. He wandered outside and looked at his watch. The lorry had gone. With loading complete, the men climbed into the van and drove away, leaving Marko to pay a visit to Teresa Joliffe.

  * * *

  The van’s onward journey to Workington took forty minutes. It pulled into a private garage connected to a four-storey town house close to the port. Curtis got out and flicked the garage light on, then went to check upstairs. The room was ready. The men took off their coats: carrying bodies up flights of stairs was hard labour. The women were left on the floor of a room that was empty apart from a few beds. They’d have to share.

  In the kitchen, a man worked diligently at the table. He took small white pills and crushed them with a gas lighter, tipping the powder into a plastic cup then mixing it with enough water to dissolve it. Once satisfied with the emulsion, he took a syringe, placed a filter over the tip of the needle and drew the liquid up into the barrel, leaving a semi-solid substance at the bottom of the cup. When he’d filled six syringes, he placed them to one side and began preparing more.

  After he’d prepared another six, he gathered the cups and began adding water to the residue that had adhered to the bottom of them. He took another syringe and drew up the liquid from the first cup, then emptied it out into the next, swirling with the thumb of the syringe to liquefy the residue from that cup. After he’d done this five times, he felt satisfied that he had a strong enough solution, and he casually injected himself in the arm. This was his wage. Then he went to lie down on a single bed in the corner of the room, under a shelf laden with pots and pans. He didn’t notice Curtis come in to collect the syringes, and Curtis didn’t disturb him.

  The women were injected before they were unwrapped; it might get too tricky if they tried to do it while they were struggling. As soon as an arm or leg was exposed, it would be stuck with the needle. They had to be careful at first, as these women were highly likely never to have been near a narcotic in their lives before, so it was strictly minuscule doses to begin with. Gradually they would become dependent upon the substance and easier to control.

  Once they’d all been injected, they were taken to the beds and attached to the headboards so they couldn’t leave. They’d get used to it.

  ‘Welcome to England,’ Curtis said.

  Chapter 43

  A car was dispatched to Kirkstone slate quarry. They’d been up here several times before. Pissed-up kids loved to prank the police, and incidents were on the up. They didn’t use blues for this one: if it was a hoax, they’d just wake people up; if it wasn’t, they’d find corpses. The tip-off was untraceable.

  After 450 million years in the making, the stone of Kirkstone had ceased to turn a profit, and the mine had closed in 2012. The two PCs kept a lookout for obstacles as they drove carefully up the hill. The place was like a deserted town and no one had bothered tidying up, but adventurers and thieves occasionally came and dragged lumps of stuff they found valuable off in vans and car boots. They drove past an old sign leaning at a ninety-degree angle; it read: DANGER: WORKING QUARRY.

  The call had simply mentioned an abandoned tin shed. It frustrated the PCs working the night shift, but at least it gave them something to do. They parked next to some buildings that looked like working sheds and got out. They put coats on and fetched torches from the boot, then separated and took a look around. The place was eerie and felt like the remains of a village after a nuclear war.

  Three large vessels, the shape of torpedoes, gleamed under the torchlight in the first shed; another dilapidated sign read: DANGER: FLAMMABLE LIQUID. The officer moved forward to where blocks of dark slate were piled up next to a rusty truck. A table and chair sat next to an old map, as if the guy sitting there had just popped out to take a pee. Electric controls hung from the ceiling, and he read another sign on the wall next to a lever: IN CASE OF FIRE TURN OFF VALVE.

  Somewhere a tap dripped, and the PC shivered. He had to admit, it would be a good place to dump a body. No one would ever know it was there unless someone wanted them to. Deciding he’d found nothing of worth, he headed back into the bitter night, where he heard his colleague shouting his name. He followed the sound to another shed, and his colleague shone his torch into a corner where a huge contraption of thick pipes and old scaffolding stood, still erect despite the neglect. Underneath it they saw two mounds about the size of bodies. It could still be a hoax; they could easily just be rolled-up carpet. The mounds were covered in what looked like blankets and plastic sheeting.

  It was no hoax.

  As they went forward to investigate, the PCs smelled something familiar. It was the same smell as a sheep rotting on the fells being picked at by crows. They looked at one another and walked closer. The smell became stronger. One man held both torches as the other bent down and moved an old blanket and some plastic sheeting.

  He leapt backwards.

  ‘Jesus!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s a face. Oh God, I want to be sick.’ The PC rushed to another corner of the shed, where he doubled over and retched. Meanwhile, the other man bent down to see what his colleague had found. Being the owner of a stronger stomach, he was able to reveal more of what was underneath the covers, confirming what his colleague had said, and moved on to the next one. Both victims were male. The second one was on his back and his open eyes stared up through the plastic. Both looked as though they’d suffered huge trauma to the head and face. Given that the bodies had been wrapped up, the assumption was homicide, but they’d have to get detectives and medics here as soon as they possibly could.

  They radioed in and requested a medical te
am. They’d have to wait here to secure the area, and it could take a while. Their shift had just become busy.

  * * *

  It was DC Phillips’ turn to be on call that night, and he wore gloves as he examined the bodies, or what he could see of them. A forensics officer was already working in the small shed, and lights had been erected. The two PCs guarded the door. They were freezing.

  ‘Looks like executions,’ one observed.

  ‘They obviously pissed someone off.’

  ‘Poor bastards.’

  Phillips searched the victims’ pockets and found ID. Unless it had been planted, he could be looking at the bodies of Kevin Cottrell and Tony Proctor. He shook his head. Porter would be pleased. He also found a business card for the Thwaite Hotel, a broken mobile phone and a pile of bloody clothes.

  He stepped outside.

  ‘All right, lads. Not a nice discovery. Make sure you look after yourselves.’ He knew what sights like the one inside the shed could do to coppers. In the past they’d been expected to take it stoically on the chin. Nowadays there were certain services that could help after such cases.

  After five hours, the bodies were removed in black bags. They’d been wrapped in forensic sheets that would make sure any evidence wasn’t lost in transit. The heads, hands and feet were wrapped individually. The forensics officer had been to the scenes of RTAs, stabbings and domestics, but he’d never seen anything like this. He’d tentatively suggested blunt-force trauma – knowing he was stating the obvious – but nothing would be certain until the coroner had done his work.

  Phillips left a message for Kelly to tell her that he’d be in late, and gave her a precis of his nocturnal activities. He made sure that a separate investigation was opened, until the bodies could be formally identified. Then he went home to bed.

  Chapter 44

  When Dennis Hill got off his bike and wheeled it to the back of his little house, Craig Lockwood was waiting for him.