15 Signs Of Murder (Fifteen thrillers)

by Luis Samways

  “That will never happen,” she whispered to herself. Her raspy voice was worrying her. She’d never heard her vocal chords sound so deep before. She put it down to the fact that she was under stress and that the air in the back of the coffin was thick. She didn’t want to die in a coffin, suffocating and panicking, but she was also a realist. She knew that there were far worse ways to go. She’d seen men begging for death before. And when that happens, you know they must be in some serious pain. She wasn’t really in pain. It was mostly discomfort. Discomfort and fear. She thought that if she could push those feelings to the back of her head, she’d be able to make heads or tails of the situation.

  So she closed her eyes for a few minutes and relaxed. She could see all sorts of colors dancing around in the darkness of her mind. Red and blue. Yellow and green. A lot of black and white. Maybe a little orange. She remained like that, with her eyes closed, for a long while. She watched the colors dance. She smiled. They were happy. She could imagine them making squawking sounds, like birds. She didn’t know if she was going crazy or not, but she was enjoying the colors. They were comforting her. Embracing her. And then she opened her eyes suddenly and panicked. A thought popped in her head.

  “I’m never going to see colors again,” she said, realizing she was destined to an eternity of blackness.

  She began to get angry. She balled her fists up and started hammering at the sides of the coffin.

  BANG. BANG.

  Vibrating wood, but nothing more. No cracks. No lights. Nothing but painful fists.

  “LET ME OUT OF HERE!” she screamed. But there was no answer. No one opened the coffin door. No one’s voice sounded over the radio. There was just silence.

  Silence and blackness.

  Pitch blackness.

  Twenty-Eight

  After receiving the news that Donny had found out who killed his brother, Hamish wondered if it was true. For as long as he could remember, he’d known Demi Reynolds as an honest woman. He was aware of what she did for a living. He wasn’t stupid. He knew she was a “bad person,” just like the rest of them. But he also knew that she had a caring side, which he couldn’t really see Donny or the rest of them having. That distinguished her from the others. It made her different. And from his own experience, he knew that when somebody was different, they paid the price.

  Whatever that price might be, they paid it in full.

  He remembered when he joined the firm all those years ago, they used to treat him equally. But once they realized what his condition was, not being all “up there,” as they used to say, they started to treat him differently. At the pub he’d be the idiot. People would call him names and tease him. It was like being back at school; the only difference was that he was a young man with a chip on his shoulder. But as time went on, and the jokes wore thin, he started to not care what they said.

  Sure, they used to call him plenty of names. Some of them still did. But the one thing they couldn’t take away from him was his kindness. It sounded like a strange thing to possess in the business they were in, but Hamish always thought that a little bit of compassion and kindness could take you a long way, even in the game they were in.

  Hamish was doing all his thinking in his car. He was parked outside the pub, watching the beer garden. His meeting with Johnson was over, and he had learned two things about himself in that meeting.

  He could still punch people pretty good, and he loved Demi Reynolds.

  He didn’t know how much he loved Demi Reynolds or what sort of love it was, but he knew that he wanted to express it somehow. He knew that he couldn’t let them kill her. Hamish was adamant about that. Something in his mind was telling him that it just wasn’t acceptable to let them take her life. So he was sat there, devising a plan in his car. The windshield was fogging up. Condensation was spreading across the sleek glass. Hamish’s breath was steamy, and his hands were red raw. He rubbed them together for warmth. The gray British sky made him feel gloomy as he stared out of the windshield into nothingness. But he was determined to come up with some sort of plan. Unfortunately, any rational ideas were escaping him. All he could think about was bursting into his boss’s office and attacking him.

  Brute force was all he knew, after all. Couple that with a little bit of passion, and you got Hamish. But that combination was a dangerous one. It didn’t lend itself well to clear thoughts and decisive planning. It got in the way of things. It meddled with his rationality. Hamish wanted to think clearly but couldn’t do so. He was too consumed with thoughts of Demi being buried alive in a coffin. When Johnson told him what was what, he immediately felt guilty about overlooking the coffin whilst his boss and goons went shopping for shovels. He didn’t quite know how he could live with himself if he knew Demi was in there. So the only way he thought he could redeem himself would be to save her.

  “I need to track Donny down,” he said to himself. He caught a glimpse of his eye whites in the rearview mirror. They were barely white. They were more red than white. Strained and panicked. He was feeling it rise up within him. Ready to explode. But he was calm. He was keeping his anxiety at bay. The thought of crossing the notorious Donny the Hat Harris was nothing short of stupid. But sometimes people do stupid things.

  And sometimes stupid things are all that are left.

  Hamish reached into his jacket and pulled out his mobile. He clicked on a few buttons and then pressed green. It rang a few times but was quickly answered.

  “What the fuck do you want?” the voice asked.

  “Hey, boss. I want to know if you needed any help?” Hamish asked.

  There was a cackle from the other side of the phone. Hamish didn’t like being laughed at.

  “Why the hell would I want help from you?”

  “I just thought that you’d need help subduing your brother’s killer. I mean, I’m a big guy. Nobody would get past me.”

  The laughing stopped, and the voice on the other end of the phone became stern and serious.

  “Who told you I found my brother’s killer?” Donny asked.

  “Johnson. He also said that you may need some help. Maybe I could dig a hole for the body.”

  The laughter returned, and it angered Hamish. He tightened his free fist and gently hit his leg, numbing it a little.

  “I don’t need a hole for a body,” Donny said. He laughed some more, then said, “But I do need one for a coffin. If you want to get your ass down Ashford’s Cemetery and help me out, I’d appreciate it. I didn’t ask you before because I thought you had some sort of personal relationship with Demi.”

  Hamish swallowed hard and said, “Nah, don’t really know the cunt.”

  He heard Donny howling with laughter. “Good. It’ll take you forty-odd minutes to get down here, but don’t worry. The fun won’t start for a while. I’m letting her sweat before we begin. So take your time, and bring some boots and a shovel.”

  The phone went dead. Hamish pressed the red button and nearly broke down in tears. He hated himself for sounding like one of them. But if his plan was going to work, he’d need to sound as much like them as he could, or he’d be buried deep underground, too. And there wasn’t any coming back from that.

  Twenty-Nine

  DCI Amy Francis and DI Lionel Craig are sat at a greasy spoon café north of Demi Reynolds’ apartment. It was around a mile and a half from the crime scene, and was nearly empty and smelled of frying oil and salt. They’d just been to the counter and ordered two builder’s teas and a plate of egg and chips. The woman behind the counter told them that it would be at least ten minutes before they received their meals. They sat down at a corner table. Lionel squeezed into the far side of the table against the wall, and Francis sat with her back to the open-plan café. Behind her, ten or so tables remained empty, the remnants of a busy day splattered across their surfaces: salt shakers leaking salt, ketchup bottles dribbling red sauce everywhere, and mustard squeeze bottles forming a skin on the nozzle.

  Both detectives looked tired and dis
interested. They’d spent a good portion of a day at Demi’s apartment, only to come up with nothing. They both stared off into space even though they were sitting opposite each other. One of them finally spoke after the waitress brought them their supper. She placed the eggs and chips on the surface of the greasy table. Lionel was the only one to look up and offer the waitress some sort of smile. But it was no use; she wasn’t up for smiling. She walked off with a dirty rag in her hand, wiping at some of the free tables as she went.

  “Nice place, isn’t it?” Lionel asked, looking across at his partner, who appeared akin to a child playing with the food on her plate. She obviously wasn’t hungry, but she knew she had to eat. You just couldn’t go twenty seven-hours without eating something, even if it was a greasy plate of saturates.

  “It does the job,” she replied.

  “I think the place is nice in its own special way. You know, like a little getaway for all of the town’s builders and whatnot. I think a lot of these places are dying out. When our kids get to our age, these places will be extinct. You really think they’ll keep places like this open in twenty, thirty years’ time? With all the awareness surrounding fatty foods and the pressure from the media to be trim,” Lionel said, biting into a forkful of egg.

  “Does it really matter?” Francis replied, staring at her plate of grub.

  “I’m sure it matters to somebody. Surely there’s some man or woman out there thinking of these things. I mean, what’s happening to our world? Will it be for the better, or are our freedoms of fatty food and bad life choices slowly vanishing? Will people still die of preventable diseases after the world bans all that’s fun? Or is it all a conspiracy theory where the only thing that’s being extended is people’s fears of dying? Because, let’s face it, no matter how many carbs you avoid, or fatty foods you deny, nothing’s stopping you from being offed by East End gangsters or hit by a truck. People seem to forget that.”

  “You reckon that’s what happened to our girl?” Francis asked, staring straight at Lionel, who was stuffing his face. Lionel caught her looking at him and became self-conscious all of a sudden. He wiped the yolk residue off his face and coughed a few times.

  “I don’t know what happened to ‘our girl,’ as you call her. But I do know that whatever happened, it happened quickly.”

  Francis nodded sternly and began to play with her plate of food again. “Yeah, they came in quick. Busted the door down proper. Grabbed our girl and made a run for it. But what then? Where did they take her? Who was responsible for nabbing her? Is she dead?”

  Lionel laughed and said, “If we knew that, then we wouldn’t be drowning our sorrows in egg and chips, now, would we?”

  Both of them went quiet once again. They didn’t speak for ten minutes…not until they received a call that would change everything.

  Thirty

  Demi was struggling to breathe. Her lungs felt tired and deflated. She had been in the coffin now for a good four hours. Maybe more. She wasn’t exactly sure of how long she’d been cooped up in the box, but she knew that her time was coming to an end. The car had slowed down, and the surface of the road they were driving on had changed. It went from a smooth ride to a bumpy one. She guessed that they had been driving on motorways and link roads. But now they were out in the sticks. Country roads and hills. That’s what she was experiencing, and it wasn’t fun. Every turn the vehicle took made her go crashing into the side of the coffin. Seeing there wasn’t much room to maneuver, every crash into the side made her body contort. She was struggling to stay in one position. But she was trying to stay strong. Every time she was thrown around inside the coffin, she took a few deep breaths and rearranged herself once again, stretching out and getting back into the position she felt most comfortable in.

  Demi wasn’t going to allow them to get the better of her. She wasn’t going to allow them to break her. But she felt close. Demi was on the cusp of breaking. Teetering on the edge of despair. She was about to give up when she heard the radio crackle and her former boss’s voice echoed through the confined space.

  “You still alive in there?” he said, his voice sounding deep as it bounced off the grainy wooden surfaces of the walls that surrounded her.

  Because she had been thrown about a lot due to the country roads, she had lost track of where she’d kept the walkie-talkie. She started to search for it frantically. The LED light that shone off its front was illuminating her feet. That’s when she realized that the radio was out of reach. She wasn’t going to manage to get it down there. Not in that cramped space. Her hands were free, but her feet were still tied. And that meant that they were useless. She tried to reach for the radio, but it was more than touching distance away from her.

  “If you aren’t dead in there, you will be soon. There’s no use in ignoring me. It won’t do you any good. Surely you want to take advantage of speaking to me? The last person you’ll ever talk to! That’s a big deal. Before you know it, the air will run out in there. You’ll choke on your own damn tongue and die. But not before you hear us stop and then roll the coffin out from the back of this hearse. Then you’ll hear us lower you. You’ll feel the sensation of us putting you into the ground. The sides might tilt a little as we struggle to steady the coffin. But we’ll get you in there, and then you’ll hear nothing but silence. Followed by more silence. Minutes of the stuff. Deafening yet so loud. It will be like a constant buzzing in the middle of your head. Like you have an insect in there. It flew into your ear and ate its way past your eardrum. Now it’s bouncing off the inside of your head. Rattling at your skull. Nibbling on your brain. If you close your eyes, you’ll be able to see its shadow reflecting off your retina. But then it’ll disappear, and nothing but noise will be present. Loud, intruding noise. That will be the sound of us throwing dirt on the coffin. You’ll hear it all until you hear nothing more.”

  Demi was still struggling as she attempted to grab the walkie-talkie. But it was no use. The light went dead just before she reached it.

  “Fuck!” she screamed.

  The batteries were dead. They must be. Or her boss was playing games with her. Maybe he stopped talking to get a rise out of her? It was working. She was rising, all right. Rising to the challenge. She was determined to break free from her restraints. And once she did, she’d make them pay. She’d make them pay dearly.

  “Okay, easy, Demi. You can do this. Stop thinking of yourself as a tied-up girl in a coffin. You’re not that girl. You’re a half-tied-up girl in coffin. But that’s not what’s important here. What’s important here is you have just as much power as he does. If not more. You’re the one in the coffin. You’re the one with all the cards at hand. Not him. He thinks he’s the one with all the cards, but in this case, the dealer isn’t the one controlling the table. In this case, it’s you. And you’re counting cards. Waiting for a pair. And once you get your pair, you’ll make him think you’re folding. But then you’ll raise the stakes. Ten million to one.”

  She took a deep breath and said it again. “Ten million to one.”

  She started to wriggle her feet some. They were becoming loser. Her restraints were slacking, just like the ones around her wrists did hours prior.

  “That’s my chances of escape. Ten million to one. But they’re chances nonetheless. And a good card shark knows that all you need is that one lucky hand.”

  She continued to wriggle her feet. She could feel the restraints around her ankles loosen dramatically. They were stretching. And then she heard a snap. The restraints had broken. She breathed heavily. It had taken a lot out of her. She was nearly wheezing, but she knew she had to continue. Her plan was just beginning to take shape. She’d drawn a lucky hand; now it was time to see what the dealer had.

  She started to swat her feet around the confined place. She was trying to kick the walkie-talkie and oxygen cylinder back toward her. She managed to kick the cylinder toward her upper back and reached around awkwardly with her left arm. Her shoulder felt like it was going to pop out a
s she grabbed the oxygen and gasped in pain, clicking her shoulder back in place as she sucked down on the cylinder. She took three very deep breaths. The fresh air hissing into her mouth made everything feel better. Her head hurt less. She wasn’t dizzy anymore, and her heart eased a little in her chest.

  She was quiet for a long while. The vehicle was still moving. The country roads were still bumpy, but she was thinking hard. Long and hard, in fact. She was trying to figure out a way to escape. She sucked down on her oxygen cylinder once again. This time, she stopped halfway through. Her eyes bulged, and a slight grin found its way across her face.

  She placed the oxygen cylinder on her front and stared up at the low wooden lid that was keeping her locked tight in the box. She remembered how they had drilled four large nails into the corners of the coffin. She wasn’t getting out of there easily. But something was striking her as an opportunity. What if she made a hole in the lid? What if she was able to kick and punch her way out of the coffin and get her hands on her boss?

  What if she was able to set herself free?

  “Only one way to find out,” she said, clenching her fist and punching the lid above her, right in the middle.

  “Fuck me!” she said, writhing in pain. She grabbed at her right hand, feeling her knuckles. They were busted open. Grazed and bleeding. Shooting pain from her fingers up to her arm and neck.

  “Punching my way out might not be the answer,” she said, gasping for air once again.

  But she didn’t have time to think anymore. The car had slowed down and had come to a stop. She heard doors opening and closing. Muffled voices and footsteps.

  And then her heart began to race again at what she heard next. The sound of shovels hitting dirt. They were digging. Digging her grave.

  That’s when she realized her odds had gone from ten million to one, to one hundred million to one.

  She wasn’t getting out of there.