Secrets of the Dead: A serial killer thriller that will have you hooked (Detective Robyn Carter crime thriller series Book 2)

by Carol Wyer

  ‘I do not believe the general public is at risk,’ she repeated.

  ‘DI Carter, are you searching for a serial killer?’

  She had known the question was going to arise. She spoke directly to the young man holding a microphone bearing a logo from a local radio station. ‘We are looking into each individual case, and if we establish a connection, we shall be seeking one suspect. Thank you. No further comment.’

  Robyn spotted Amy Walters standing to one side, a sly smile on her face. Robyn began to move away, ignoring the stream of questions being hurled at her. As she was about to enter the building, she heard Amy Walters shouting, ‘DI Carter, can you confirm that the killer left behind notes on each of the bodies?’

  With her arm against the door she turned quickly. How on earth had the woman got hold of such sensitive information? ‘No comment, Miss Walters. This is an ongoing investigation and I am not at liberty to divulge any information that may jeopardise it.’

  She threw the door open and marched into the station, stopping in the corridor to take a deep breath. She’d blown it. Her reaction had been exactly what Amy Walters needed to confirm the invoices existed. She stormed to her office and rang the Lichfield Times. ‘Tell Amy Walters to call me immediately.’ She banged down the phone and paced around the room, pausing intermittently to stare at her whiteboard. Someone had told Amy about the notes. It was highly unlikely any of her team had said anything. She trusted them all implicitly. There was only one other person who could have given her that information, and that was the killer himself.

  The phone rang and she snatched it from the desk. ‘Carter,’ she snapped. It was Matt.

  ‘Boss, I’ve spoken to Harriet Worth’s friends and found out something very interesting – Harriet was being stalked. According to one of her friends – Lulu Howard – Harriet was concerned about a man she’d befriended who walked his dog at Stowe Pool, a small reservoir near Lichfield Cathedral. She only lived a short distance away in Cathedral Rise at the time, and used to run there most mornings. On one occasion, the man’s dog slipped its lead and ran away. She helped recover it and thereafter whenever they met, he spoke to her.

  ‘At first she thought he was just being friendly and she would sometimes stop and chat. Then one day he came to the park without his dog – it turned out the animal had died, and he was so upset she invited him to the café for tea to help calm him down. After that he waited for her every day and would try to engage her in conversation, so Harriet stopped running in the morning to avoid him. She grew suspicious when he was in the same spot every day no matter what time she went training. This started to trouble her and she sought advice from Lulu and Linda when they met up for a fun run. The man had announced he was madly in love with her and it freaked her out. Lulu and Linda both advised her to tell her husband and report the man. Harriet didn’t want Alan to get the wrong idea – in case he believed she’d been leading him on – and was going to tell him after the spa weekend.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you got a name for this man, did you?’

  ‘Lulu didn’t know that. She remembered the man had a West Highland terrier called Alfie. No description of the man though. I’ve got one more of Harriet’s friends to see.’

  ‘Thanks, Matt. Catch you later.’

  It was only another snippet of information, but she added it to the whiteboard. The man had a West Highland terrier, and the Fiat 500 they were searching for had a sticker saying ‘I Love Westies’. Surely it was no coincidence?

  The phone rang again. This time it was Amy Walters.

  ‘Who told you about the notes, Amy?’

  ‘So there were notes on the body?’

  ‘Don’t box clever with me. You know how unprofessional that was, coming out with it at the press conference. Who told you?’

  ‘I can’t divulge my source, DI Carter.’

  Robyn felt a surge of anger. ‘Amy, this isn’t some game. You want a story, I’ll give you one – but not until the investigation is over. I cannot put people’s lives in danger because you want a scoop. You set me up for this. This is what you wanted. Now, who was it that informed you?’

  ‘You’ll give me an exclusive on the Lichfield Leopard?’

  She cringed at the name. ‘Only if you divulge your source.’

  ‘I’m recording this conversation, DI Carter, so you’d better make good on your promise.’

  She mentally cursed the woman. ‘I’m waiting.’

  Amy’s voice was triumphant. ‘It was the Leopard. He rang yesterday afternoon at four ten.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to tell me?’

  ‘I’m telling you now.’

  ‘Amy, if he rings again, call me immediately. Record the conversation. Did you record the last one with him?’

  ‘It happened out of the blue, so I wasn’t prepared. I don’t think he’ll ring again.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘He laughed and told me he wasn’t stupid, that he wouldn’t risk his plan by calling again.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘He thanked me for his new name, declared he was very pleased with it and roared like a big cat before ringing off.’

  She was furious. The woman had spoken to their killer and not alerted them to the fact. ‘Withholding evidence is a crime.’

  ‘I haven’t withheld it, though, DI Carter. I’ve willingly shared it. And now I shall look forward to my exclusive with you. You’ve got my number.’

  Robyn resisted raising her voice. She knew the journalist was deliberately goading her. ‘I’m going to have to ask you for your mobile. We have to see if we can trace where the call came from. I’ll send an officer around to collect it.’

  Amy went quiet. ‘How am I supposed to work without it?’

  ‘You’ll have to use a landline. Be grateful I’m not making this more difficult for you. An officer will be with you shortly.’

  She slammed the phone down. Bloody journalists! Amy Waters had just made her life more difficult and she had agreed to talk to her after the case was solved. Mulholland was not going to be at all impressed.

  Forty-Nine

  Sweat poured down his neck and pooled between his shoulder blades. He was having a really bad turn. His head felt like someone was drilling through his skull and into his brain, and he wanted nothing more than for it to stop. With trembling hands he reached for the pills and dry-swallowed four – double the recommended dose.

  He blamed his lousy headache on the fact he’d lost Scott Dawson the night before. His perfectly thought-through plan had been ruined, and for the moment he couldn’t think of a new one because of the agonising waves of pain in his head. He curled into a ball and waited for the pain to ease.

  His sleep had been punctuated with nightmares from his childhood, and as he lay in his tight ball he recalled one of them…

  He had been asleep in the room he shared with three other boys at the home. Stacey was in a different room, on the bottom floor, with two girls. She had settled into the home better than him, and he could feel a gulf between them as she became increasingly friendly with the girls. He had had more trouble making friends. In fact, he hadn’t made any. The other boys called him a freak. With his lanky frame, he was a good bit taller than them, but the reason they called him names was down to his left ear, which was larger than the right and deformed.

  The room was pitch black when he woke with a jolt. The others had surrounded his bed, and before he could react, they dragged him from his sheets and half-carried, half-pulled him towards the showers. Once there, they shoved him into a cubicle and stuffed his head down the toilet filled with excrement and urine. They held his head down in the floating mess until he thought he would drown. Finally, they yanked his head up and let him gulp in air, laughing all the while. They shoved his head in again and flushed the chain. He felt the faeces wash around his face, filling his nostrils and ears and hair. He gagged. Suddenly, the pressure was released and he lifted his head in a rush, breathed
in and threw up.

  The boys taunted him as he puked into the same toilet bowl he had been forced into.

  ‘Big ears, teeny knob,’ they chorused.

  They left him on the floor, crying, hair reeking. After a while he stopped crying and climbed into the shower, where he stood for an hour, under scalding water, until he could no longer smell the foul odour.

  Three weeks later, there was a fire in the home that started in the boys’ dormitory. Apparently, the three boys had been drinking and smoking. In a drunken state, one of them had not extinguished his cigarette properly and it had set fire to his bedding while he slept. The other boys were overcome by fumes and did not make it out in time with the girls. Only one of them did – blackened by smoke, he had sobbed and wailed that he had tried to stop them. He had warned them not to drink but they had told him to shut up. He was much younger than them. They had threatened him and told him to stay quiet about their activities. It was not the first time, he told the policeman. He had woken up when the fire started and tried save his friends, but he was only ten and couldn’t drag them from their beds. So he had raced downstairs and hammered on the girls’ door and got them out instead. He was commended for his bravery. They never discovered that he had brought in the cigarettes and stolen bottles of whisky that had made his room-mates dopey and sent them into a deep slumber, nor that he had smothered the boys one by one as they slept before setting fire to the bedding and making good his escape.

  His head began to clear a little. He took another two pills. He had to get back on track. There were only three days to go.

  Fifty

  The call came as a surprise. ‘DI Carter, it’s Scott Dawson.’

  ‘Scott, where are you?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. I’m worried. Well, to be honest, I’m terrified, and so many other things too.’

  ‘Tell me where you are and I’ll make sure you’re safe from any harm.’

  There was a silence and a sound like a hiccough. Scott was crying. ‘I’m safe here,’ he replied.

  She waited until he had collected himself. ‘Scott, where are you?’

  ‘In a place where I can’t be found. I have to confess something, DI Carter. I can’t live with myself any more. It’s eating me away at me.’

  She pressed the receiver to her ear. ‘Go ahead. You can tell me.’

  A soft sob. ‘It’s about Miles. I loved him.’

  ‘We know. We found a receipt for a stay at the Hideaway Hotel and messages on Miles’s second phone.’

  ‘Then you must know he meant the world to me. I met Miles a few years ago when I was in America. He was travelling, getting over the loss of a boyfriend who’d been tragically killed in a motorbike crash. I was young – trying to find out who I really was. I was at a specialist school learning ju-jitsu, and bumped into him one evening at a bar. We got chatting – two Brits together in a foreign country. First, it was a holiday romance. He was my first, if you know what I mean. Then it became more serious. My training course was coming to an end and we decided to part. He wasn’t ready to commit to a full-time relationship again and had more travelling to do, and I felt I was too young to get involved. I wanted a career.’

  Scott sounded wistful. She strained to hear any background sounds that might indicate his location.

  ‘I came home, started work at Bromley Hall and met Alex. I think it’s fair to say I’ve always been confused about my sexuality. I am equally happy with men and women and I fell for Alex in a different way. I hadn’t planned on having a permanent relationship with her, then she fell pregnant, and I was really taken with the idea of being a father. Miles was out of my life and I hadn’t felt the inclination to be with any other men. Alex was there and we had George on the way. It seemed logical – get married. Then Miles turned up at Bromley Hall. Neither of us expected it and neither of us expected to feel the way we did. We picked up where we had left off. We had to keep it secret – not just because of Alex and George, but because his job would have been at risk too. We only used pay-as-you-go phones to contact each other and initials instead of our real names in case the phones got discovered. He was “AL” for American lover and I was “JJ” because I teach ju-jitsu.’

  Robyn made a non-committal noise and wondered where all this was going. She hoped it wasn’t some pre-suicide confession. She thought she could detect the rumbling of a large machine in the background. It faded before she could get a handle on it. Scott was talking quietly, lost in a world of memories. She looked into the corridor, hoping to catch the attention of a passing officer. She wanted a trace on this call.

  ‘Last Wednesday, Miles called me into his office and told me I was being fired as part of the cutbacks. The classes were being axed and the gym was going to be run by junior staff. I was being made redundant. I’m afraid I took it badly. Miles was as cool as a cucumber. It was as if our relationship meant nothing. Worse still, he hadn’t mentioned a thing when we were in London. We’d had a wonderful, romantic time. Then two weeks later he announced I was going to be made redundant. He must have known about the redundancy plans and said nothing.’

  She listened to his words and the puzzle pieces that had been floating about in her head for days finally came together. Scott had run away, not through fear of being murdered so much as what would happen to him when the police uncovered this information.

  Scott sounded weary, the very effort of speaking squeezing the last bit of energy from him as he recounted the events of that night…

  ‘Miles, you can’t. You just can’t.’

  Miles, in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, looks at him without the usual tenderness. This isn’t the Miles he knows and loves. This isn’t the man who held his hand across the white linen tablecloth as they sat by the window at the Hideaway Hotel, a breakfast tray of warm croissants in front of them and champagne bubbles swirling and popping in their glasses as they toasted their relationship.

  The strip light in his office highlights the shadows under Miles’s eyes, two half-crescents that sink to his cheekbones. ‘I’m sorry,’ is all he offers. ‘This is out of my control, Scott. And it isn’t the end of the world. You’ll easily find work. You have a lot to offer. You can rest assured I’ll write a good reference.’

  ‘What about us?’ he asks, already feeling the answer in the pit of his stomach. The weekend in London wasn’t to celebrate their relationship – it was to end it. Miles knew all along that he was going to fire him. Miles’s face says it all and he feels sick.

  ‘Look, it was never going to last. It has been amazing and I’m so glad I found you again, but it’s different this time. You’re married. You have a son. I can’t be responsible for breaking up your marriage. Move away. Get a new position. Enjoy your family and forget about me.’

  Scott’s stomach tightens and he fights back the tears. Miles puts a hand on his shoulder; the warmth of it seeps into him, yet he pulls away. His sorrow turns instantly into anger. Miles spots the change.

  ‘Go take the class, Scott,’ he says. ‘You have clients waiting. We’ll talk again.’

  Scott can’t concentrate on his exercise routines and makes mistakes. All the while he maintains a false smile. Inside, his head is in turmoil, like someone has turned him upside down and shaken his thoughts so they float about like snowflakes in a storm. As soon as the class is over he heads back to the office. The light is on. Miles is with someone else and the door is shut. He waits outside, back against the wall, wondering how he can convince Miles to take him back. Maybe they could meet again in London?

  He can’t wait any longer. He heads to the changing room and drops onto a bench by the lockers. He pulls out his secret phone and texts Miles. He receives no response. The wait is agonising. He debates whether or not to return to the office. Instead he strips off his kit, sweat-stained from the exercise class, and drops it on the floor. Still no reply. He stands in the shower, the water beating on his aching shoulders, and wishes Miles would respond.

  He emerges, glistening
, and checks his phone again before sending another plea. Clutching the phone he heads for the sauna – a place that usually relieves the tension and eases the aches he has begun to experience more often.

  It is hotter than usual in the sauna, and as he breathes in the dry heat, he debates forgoing it, and then decides he is hot because his heart rate is elevated. He is stressed. He needs to take a few moments to calm down. He shuts the door and throws himself onto one of the wooden benches, face up. He studies the wooden knots in the ceiling and counts the slats as he has done many times before. There are thirty-two, and usually counting them settles his mind after a hard day. The gentle noise of the pool as the water swooshes through the skimmers does not relax him either. Sweat oozes from him, as if he is being wrung out, and the thrumming in his temples is too loud to bear. The heat is making him uncomfortable. He swings his legs off the bench and eases into a sitting position.

  He is about to leave when the door bursts open and Miles stomps in.

  ‘Scott, I’ve told you I’m truly sorry. The decision to fire you didn’t come from me.’

  Scott looks at his lover’s face, a face he has caressed so many times. ‘I can accept the job loss, but I can’t accept losing what we have.’

  Miles pulls at his collar. Dark patches of sweat have already formed under his arms. His forehead is damp, beads of sweat already forming there.

  ‘I think it’s best we call it a day,’ he says, his arm stretching for the door handle. ‘We both need to move on.’

  Scott’s right eyebrow arches in surprise. ‘We need to move on? Don’t you mean you need to move on? Is there somebody else, Miles?’ He leaps to his feet and in one swift movement blocks the door with his frame, legs apart, thigh muscles bulging.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Scott. Let me out. It’s bloody hot in here.’