Killing Jericho: A Heart-Stopping Thriller (The Scott Jericho Crime Thrillers Book 1)

by Will Harker

  I threw open the door.

  There, beyond the bridge, the lights still waited. They seemed duller now, weaker, and unlike earlier today, there were definitely two pinpricks shining out.

  As I started across the porch, the lights began to flicker between the trees. They were moving, retreating into the depths of the forest. Then suddenly they seemed to swing downwards and, in the next moment, disappeared altogether. I swore under my breath and plunged on, making for the spot where I had first glimpsed them. Behind me, Webster had woke in a fit of barking.

  The gravel that carpeted the deck of the old bridge spat out like shrapnel under my boots. On the far side, I was forced to stop and listen. I shouted at Webster to hush and, obedient juk that he was, he immediately quieted. I glanced over my shoulder, back towards the Matthers’ house and the boy’s bedroom window. Harry stood there, pointing to a place away to my right.

  I set off again, heart hammering. Roots caught at my feet, stray branches lashed my face. I stumbled, righted myself, stung my palm against some creeping vine. I could hear him now, breathing heavily, his shadow lunging against the moonlight. A slender figure but out of shape, slowing already. I put on a burst of speed, tore a path through thorn and bracken.

  My fingers had just brushed his collar when the ground gave way beneath us. I tried to step back, making a grab for him as he let out a startled squeal. I did my best to pull him away from the dip, grasping the hood of his jacket, but in so doing he tipped us both forward. Though the gully wasn’t all that deep, we fell hard, limbs entwined, him kicking out at me as we tumbled. Hitting the summer-hardened earth, his foot connected with my mouth and I tasted a flash of blood.

  “You animal!” he shrieked. “You maniac!”

  “You lunatic! You maniac!” The words Jan Malanowski had shouted at me from the dock as I was sentenced for the attack on Kerrigan. “You let him get away.”

  But it wasn’t Jan lying on the forest floor, spitting insults at me. I staggered to my feet, took out my phone, thumbed the torch. A stranger blinked in the light—thinning blond hair plastered to his scalp, brown eyes bordering on black, a plump, boyish face scored with the cares of middle age. He was wearing a Gortex raincoat and had a strap twisted around his neck like a noose, something black and heavy hanging from it. I moved my light to the object attached to the lanyard and two pinpricks began to shimmer.

  “Who are you?” I demanded. “Why have you been watching me?”

  One of the cracked binocular lenses stared back at me like the elliptical eye of a cat. Even then I knew this wasn’t the reflected light I had seen earlier today nor in the wood outside Marco’s diner. Maybe it was that knowledge that made me so angry. Just when I thought I’d made some progress with the case, all I had uncovered was a new mystery.

  “You animal,” he repeated, unwinding the chokehold of the lanyard as he shuffled away from me. “You maniac.”

  Ignoring the mental echo of Jan Malanowski, I stepped forward and attempted to help the stranger to his feet. He grasped my arm and, as soon as he was upright, thrust his palms into my chest. It was petty, playground stuff, like being shoved by a toddler, but still, it ignited a burst of rage. When he tried it again, I grasped his thin wrist and shook him hard.

  “Why were you spying on us? What do you want?”

  “Sp-spying?” The blood ran from his face. He had seen something in me, and whatever it was, it scared him half to death. “I wasn’t spying. I was tw-twitching.”

  “You’re twitching right now,” I said. “Is that some kind of technical term for a peeping Tom? Hoping to get a glimpse of the doggers in the bushes maybe?”

  “Tw-twitching is birdwatching,” he stammered. “Rare birds. I heard a nigh-nightingale had been spotted here. Then I saw lights in the Matthers’ house. It was my public duty to investigate. Next thing I know, I’m being attacked by an an-animal.”

  “Careful,” I muttered

  “A maniac.”

  I was barely conscious of what I was doing. Hadn’t even realised I’d pulled back my fist until Harry called out to me from the ridge above.

  “Scott!”

  I blinked, lowered my hand, released the stranger. Meanwhile, Harry edged his way down the incline and came to stand between us. He turned to the man, who shrank back.

  “Mr Carmody. I’m so sorry. Scott didn’t mean to…”

  Carmody, deputy mayor. Errand boy and chief licker of Hillstrom’s fat arse, as my dad had described him. Those dark brown eyes flicked from me to Harry.

  “You’re the librarian, aren’t you?” His terror gone, he quickly pulled on the pettiness of his office. “Yes, I recognise you. Encouraging all this protest nonsense about the branch closures, so we hear. Not your place, of course. A breach of your contract, in fact. And now breaking and entering private property and associating with common thugs.” He gave me the kind of look you’d reserve for an especially pungent piece of dog shit. “What will we do with you?”

  “None of this is Harry’s fault,” I said. “I’m sorry about the misunderstanding. If I can just explain?”

  He brandished his phone with a flourish. “Oh, you can make all the explanations you please. To the police.”

  I tried to avoid Harry’s gaze. Assaulting the deputy mayor of Bradbury End. That would be my bail conditions breached. By morning, I’d be back inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I SAT ON A THIN RUBBER MATTRESS, head in my hands, listening to the drunk in the next cell murdering Bruce Springsteen’s greatest hits. Born to Run was being joyfully bludgeoned to death for the twentieth time that morning. Closing my eyes against the glare of the white breezeblocks, I laid down.

  A light sweat layered my back and my legs felt shaky. No weaning dose of Zopiclone and benzo for me last night. I thought back to the snap of handcuffs, the sight of Carmody giving his report to one of the officers. Harry’s anguished face strobing in the blue lights. He’d seen it again. The rage and darkness that had made their home inside me.

  I tried to ignore the ache that memory provoked and focused again on the case. It hadn’t been the deputy mayor of Bradbury End who’d been following me. The flash I’d seen earlier in the day and near Marco’s diner had been a single glint, but perhaps something like Carmody’s binoculars had reflected the light. I turned possibilities over in my head: a handheld mirror, a phone screen, even the absurd idea of a monocle. Nothing I could picture seemed likely, so I went back to Carmody himself.

  Did his reason for being in the woods at night stack up? When he’d pushed me in the chest, I had noticed a small rectangular bulge in his jacket pocket. A birdwatcher’s manual maybe? He had the pettifogging air of a small-town politician, so his sense of civic duty on seeing trespassers in an abandoned property probably rang true. And then there was his sudden change of heart when he heard me give my name to the officers. His boss Hillstrom had been keen for the Jericho Fair to be involved in the town’s anniversary celebrations and here he was, making an official complaint against a man of that name. I saw him again in the car park at the edge of the forest, a blue vein throbbing at his temple.

  “Perhaps I overreacted,” he’d bleated. “Can’t you just give him a ticking off, Constable?”

  Unluckily for Carmody, the officers who’d arrived on the scene were the two I’d humiliated outside the library earlier that day. The bird-faced prick and his ginger-bearded colleague.

  “Afraid not, sir,” Redbeard had pouted. “Clear case of assault, you see.” Then, in a whispered aside to me: “Got ya.”

  My mind moved back through the woods to the Matthers’ house. Was the story of the mother and son who had lived there really connected to the case? If not, why had the killer visited that burned-out ruin? Perhaps simply as an act of exploration, scoping out the area before he started his grim enterprise. The child’s bedroom window did give a spectacular view of the scene of the historical tragedy. But let’s say the house was more personally co
nnected to him, who did that suggest? Mayor Hillstrom, whose great-grandfather had built the place? Carmody, who was about the right age to have been the Matthers boy? Or, despite everything that suggested otherwise, Professor Ralph Campbell? The figure I’d seen in the road beyond the rail crossing had been about the right height and build for both Campbell and Carmody.

  I opened my eyes. The drunk next door seemed to have finally completed his massacre of Springsteen’s back catalogue. I lifted my hands and examined the cuts and scratches from the forest. All this reflection was pointless. If I was convicted of the assault on Carmody, the remainder of my jail time for Kerrigan would come into play. By the time I got out, the killer would have completed his masterpiece while I…

  I turned my face to the wall. No. I couldn’t go back. Couldn’t repeat the things I’d done to survive that place. When Kerrigan had come to the fair, bandying about the rumours, I’d made light of them, but the humiliation of what they’d done to me at Hazelhurst? The degradation? I’d rather die than endure that again.

  The cell door screeched open. I turned over just as the custody sergeant entered. He was a wiry man of about fifty with the same patient, no-nonsense expression sported by every CS I’d ever known. Coming forward, he handed me my boots.

  “You’ve been lucky, son,” he said. “Must have a few friends high up. But then, I guess you knew that from the call you made last night.”

  So it seemed Pete Garris had worked a minor miracle on my behalf. Pulling on my boots, I was about to head out when the CS laid a hand on my shoulder.

  “Go careful,” he advised. “Your story’s all over the station this morning, and though you acted like a proper twat in that case with the Polish kiddies, a lot of us get it. We’ve all seen our share of horrors on the job. Times when we’d have liked to have done exactly what you did. I don’t need to tell you that’s no excuse, but… Well, there but for the grace of God. Just try and keep out of trouble, all right?”

  I promised him I’d try.

  In reception, I found two father figures waiting for me. My dad sprang out a plastic chair, smoothing down his salt-and-pepper moustache, trying his best not to look pissed off. Garris stood also. The dark rings under Pete’s eyes suggested he’d probably been up all night nursing Harriet. The thought that he’d had to abandon his sick wife again on my behalf made my stomach curdle.

  “You fucking dinlo,” my dad said through clenched teeth. “What did you think you were playing at? You could’ve got our licence to trade revoked.”

  “That would never have happened,” I replied. “I’m not associated with the fair.”

  “You’re always associated,” he snapped back. “You’ve got my name ain’t ya?”

  “Wow.” I nodded. “Your concern for my welfare is always so touching. You do know I’d have gone back to Hazelhurst if I’d been convicted, right?”

  “And whose fault would that have been? You’re your own worst enemy, Scott.”

  “Gentlemen.” Garris slipped in between us. “The reception of what I believe you call the ‘gavvers’ gaff’ isn’t the ideal place for family disputes. Scott, it might interest you to learn that, after you called me last night, I touched base with your father. He immediately got in contact with the mayor and deputy mayor, both of whom agreed to use their influence to get the charges dropped. I then put in a word myself. In that sense, it was a team effort, joskin and Traveller working together. Now, maybe you should shake hands?”

  We did, somewhat awkwardly. I still wasn’t convinced that saving the fair hadn’t been my dad’s priority.

  “Anyway,” he muttered. “Your boss here has reassured me that this nonsense you’re involved with doesn’t pose a threat to us. So I suppose I owe you an apology on that score.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “you probably do. I mean, you took a stranger’s word over mine.”

  “I’d call that the wisdom of experience,” he snorted. “By the way, we’re pulling onto the heath today, so if you could stop assaulting town dignitaries for five minutes, it would be appreciated. And that chap Zac’s been asking after you again. Christ knows why.”

  With a nod to Garris, he stormed out of the station.

  “You know he’s right,” Garris said. “You do have to be more careful. What started you off on this Carmody fellow anyway?”

  Once articulated, the idea of the pursuing light seemed utterly ridiculous, but Garris had known even more obscure hunches of mine to pay off. He didn’t dismiss it anyway, though he seemed equally mystified.

  “When you were doing that background for me on Campbell, did you find anything about his childhood?” I asked. “His family, where he was brought up?”

  Garris took out his phone and checked through his files. “Didn’t think it’d be relevant so didn’t mention it. Ah, yes, here it is. Brought up in Cambridgeshire. Both parents died while he was at university—thank God they didn’t live to see what a monster he became, eh? Though, I think parents always know. This Barton woman who had been his nanny stayed on as a kind of housekeeper-guardian figure. Why do you ask?”

  I told him the story of the Matthers’ house and its occupants.

  “Like a Gothic fairy tale, isn’t it?” he said as I finished. “Widowed mother and young son, shunned by the townsfolk, tormented by local children until the inevitable tragedy occurs. But, as you suspected, nothing to do with Campbell and his somewhat sinister nanny. Though, I suppose it fits in with what we were talking about yesterday. That sense of unreality surrounding the case. I don’t know, Scott. It feels like a distraction.”

  “What about the bridge initials carved into the newel post?”

  “You suspect that was the killer,” he said. “But you don’t actually know. It might just be another coincidence. A remote one, I grant you, but this case does seem full of them.”

  “OK. But before I let it go, can you check one more background for me?”

  He sighed when I gave him Carmody’s name.

  “He was watching the house last night,” I said. “And I’m still not sure I completely buy that birdwatching explanation.”

  Garris nodded. He looked tired and, for the first time since I’d known him, horribly frail. “Look,” I said, “forget about it. Get yourself back to Harriet. She needs you more than I do.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t think my wife needs me at all. Harriet went into the hospice this morning. She’s so doped up now, I’m not sure she even knows I’m there. I sat by her bed most of last night, holding her hand and… Nothing. She’s as good as gone, poor love.”

  “Oh God, Pete. I’m so sorry.”

  He blinked at me, dry-eyed as ever. “She knew I loved her. That’s a comfort. As for all this.” He made a vague gesture to the town that spread out beyond the reception window. “It’s actually nice to have something else to think about. I’ll check out Carmody with pleasure. What about you?”

  I looked again at my hands, scratched and filthy from the forest. “I have an apology to make,” I said. “Bridges to mend. If I can.”

  “The Moorhouse boy? Just be careful there. You’re no fool but sometimes you’re too trusting. I’m still not comfortable with the idea of him being here in Bradbury End.” He held up his hand when I tried to argue. “I’m only saying be on your guard. For all that hard man bluster, you’re a sentimentalist at heart. It can blind you to what’s right before your eyes. Anyway, what’s your next move?”

  I thought back to Campbell and the crime scenes photographs.

  “I think it’s time I visited the Electric Lady,” I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  BACK AT THE TRAILER, I could barely get the key in the lock fast enough. Once inside, I went straight to those pill boxes lined up on the shelf. My head was pounding, my tongue was like a leather strap, and lights danced before my eyes. My hands shook so badly, I almost spilled the bottle of water Harry had left for me. I threw a couple of capsules down my throat and then collapsed on
to the bed.

  After twenty minutes or so, the trembling stopped. Still, I wound the sheets around my fists and stared up at the ceiling. I’d been stupid to think I could manage this alone. Hadn’t I dealt with enough addicts in my time on the force? I should’ve known trying to wean myself off painkillers and sedatives wouldn’t end well. Once the case was over, once I had time to surrender to the withdrawal symptoms, I’d get some help. Until then, I’d have to placate my addiction.

  Because that’s what it was. Addiction. Just like sex with Zac and the rest. A way to cope and to forget. Except none of it had worked.

  Not until Campbell had brought me this case.

  I eased myself off the mattress and stood up. The trailer remained steady under my feet. Pulling aside my collar, I took a brief sniff and almost gagged. An overnight stay in a police cell did not make for a pleasing bouquet. If I had any hope of mending bridges with Haz, it would probably be best if I didn’t smell like I lived under one. The tremors had been so bad when the taxi dropped me off, I hadn’t looked to see whether he was home. Now I squirted some deodorant under my armpits and headed for the door.

  An envelope squeezed through a gap in the jamb stopped me in my tracks. My name printed on the front in that familiar hand. I tore it open. This would be his goodbye. He had seen too much of the man I had become and didn’t want to see any more.

  Dear Scott, I went to the police station first thing but one of the officers from last night was there and said you were sleeping.

  Bullshit. I hadn’t slept a wink. Just a bit of extra cruelty on the part of Redbeard or Birdface.

  I’ve had to go into work this morning. Today’s the day of the library protest and it’s bound to be mayhem. Don’t worry about Webster—Val and the girls love dogs and we’ll keep him quiet in the back office. I’m enclosing the house key, so if they let you out before I try to see you again at lunchtime, please feel free to use the shower and ransack the fridge.