For the first time, Marnie studied the girl, long fair hair pulled back in a neat ponytail, freckles spread over both her cheeks, like her father she sported a wide grin.
When Marnie closed her eyes, an image of Abby was there waiting, a similar smile on her face, her fair hair tied back in the familiar ponytail and held in place with a red rubber band.
‘You OK?’ Reese asked.
She blinked and nodded. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
Reese looked at her quizzically as she brushed past him heading out onto the car park, her face flushed with colour.
38
The blood had leaked onto Chelsea’s crisp white top, staining it red, the cold water diluting the stain to a blotchy pink. She sat propped against the door frame as Conway took a pull on the cigarette, blowing the smoke out in a long thin stream.
Chelsea flicked her eyes right, when she saw Joseph sprawled over by the sink she gave a shocked gasp and turned her malevolent gaze at the man who loomed over her.
Conway dropped the stump of the cigarette onto the wet marble tiles before screwing his boot on the stub.
‘Kill you!’ Chelsea snarled in a voice thick with fury.
Conway crouched down in front of her as she drew back her lips, showing red-stained teeth.
‘You’ll see, I know people who will finish you for what you did to me.’
‘You’re talking about Jimmy Rae?’
Chelsea didn’t answer, instead she tried to spit at him, the globule of spittle laced pink landed between his booted feet.
‘I wonder if your brother threatened the same things before he died?’ Conway asked and then smiled when he saw the anguish sweep across her face.
‘God, you are so dead,’ she tried to move but the pain in her head was crushing, her vision swimming in and out of focus.
‘Do you know why he was killed?’
‘Fuck off, I’m saying nothing.’
‘Did you know your brother was forcing young girls into prostitution?’
Chelsea ignored the question, her eyes roamed left and right as she struggled to get her vision back.
‘Do the names John or Rowan Hall mean anything to you?’
‘I’ve told you, I’m saying nothing.’
When Conway pulled the knife from the back pocket of his jeans, Chelsea’s mouth snapped closed.
He took his time opening the blade, the overhead light shone onto the steel sending out tiny sparkles of light.
Looking at Chelsea he could see the fear lurking behind the mask of hatred.
‘Under normal circumstances it would make more sense to torture your husband to get you to talk,’ Conway’s eyes were ice-cold. ‘But part of me thinks you would love that. So, I want to know everything about Rae, but—’
‘Piss off, you’ll get nothing from me,’ Chelsea fired back at him, though her bottom lip trembled in fear.
Conway lashed out, the blade sliced through the thin material of her cotton shirt, blood spurted from the three-inch gash in her right breast.
Chelsea Bold opened her mouth to scream but slammed her mouth shut as the blood-dripping blade appeared before her eyes, the tip hovering ever closer.
‘Now, let’s start again,’ Conway said. ‘How many men does Rae have working for him?’
All her life Chelsea had been used to dealing with hard men, her brother had been one of the hardest and as they were growing up he had shown Chelsea little in the way of favouritism. In fact, most of the time, Tam had treated his sister as if she were one of the boys. Chelsea could curse and swear with the best of them and when she had been growing up she had often accompanied her brother as he went around the town dishing out the pills and beatings, acquiring her own reputation in the process. She watched how Tam and Jimmy would operate, if the punter paid them – all well and good – but if they didn’t then the friends would act swiftly and without mercy, leaving the victim bleeding or worse. And yet now her brother was dead, Jimmy hadn’t bothered trying to soften the blow, he had simply told it as it was, someone, some animal had cut Tam up and shoved the body parts into a bag and thrown them through the window of Jimmy’s house.
‘You knew how your brother made his money and yet it never bothered you, did it?’ Conway leaned in closer, the blade shining silver through the red. ‘One girl was fifteen years old and I know she wasn’t the only one, nor probably the youngest either.’
‘Slags,’ Chelsea managed to snarl out the word, though now her voice held a genuine hint of fear.
Conway lashed out again and Chelsea’s mouth stretched wide in agony as her left breast sizzled with a streak of burning heat.
‘Oh God,’ she wailed as blood oozed through the white cotton.
‘I can carry on all day or you can tell me what I want to know, it’s up to you but the more I cut the more blood you lose until eventually you’ll bleed out and die.’
As the words seeped into her cringing mind Chelsea discovered that she wanted to live. She tried to hold onto the bravado, the unwritten code that you never grassed, you never talked no matter what happened. Then she thought of her brother, Rae had said that his head, hands, and feet had been dumped at his house. Which meant that Tam’s killer had discovered where Jimmy lived, her mind rebelled against the idea but the truth was that before he died Tam must have spilled his guts about Jimmy.
If someone had told her an hour ago that her brother would have grassed she wouldn’t have believed them but now, as the brown-eyed man leaned forward with the knife held in his steady hand, she knew that Tam would have said anything to stay alive.
‘Please, no more,’ she whispered, cringing back against the doorframe.
‘Talk,’ Conway said in a quiet voice.
And, just like her brother had done, Chelsea Bold started to purge her soul.
39
Marnie picked at the crust of the cheese pie, nibbling the food with little enthusiasm, her body demanded nourishment though her appetite was virtually non-existent.
She was parked by the side of a small parade of shops, the windscreen patterned with rainwater, the glass steamed from the hot food.
Tentatively, she closed her eyes half expecting the usual horrors to be waiting to torment her but when the image of Rowan Hall appeared she frowned in surprise.
Hamer had gone to the hostel and by the sound of it he had got his arse kicked by the missing John Hall, but both Emma and Drew had pointed to the fact that Hamer had a temper and would lash out if the girls didn’t do exactly as he said. Polly Hardy had revealed that Hamer had shouted the odds until John Hall snatched hold of him, then Hamer had left without much of a fight. Behind closed lids, Marnie’s eyes moved left and right as if reading from a printed page.
She started to form an image of Hamer, handy with his fists when it came to hitting a couple of young women but once he was faced with someone like Hall he had backed off without a fight. The question was, what would Hamer have done about the humiliation of being thrown out of the hostel? He could have gone back with a couple of mates and waited for Hall to show, but somehow that didn’t feel right. If Hamer had turned up mob-handed, then they would have beaten Hall but she couldn’t see them taking him away, and then there was Rowan to consider. Marnie thought of the image of the girl tacked to the noticeboard, a wide smile on her face, looking happy and content with life. If her father had been beaten by Hamer, why had she been taken? Then she thought of what Bev had said, perhaps she had been right and Hamer was just someone paid to watch the girls to make sure they brought the cash in with minimum fuss. In the darkness of the car Marnie nodded, it made sense, and if Jimmy Rae was involved then it put a whole new slant on the disappearance of Hall and his daughter. Emma had escaped from the flat, Hamer had found out where she was and in desperation he had turned up at the hostel to get her back. But eventually he would have had to let the real boss know what had happened, and if that boss had been Rae then Marnie could quite easily see Hamer being beaten to death for letting the girl go. The quest
ion was, how long had Hamer waited before telling Rae? Chances are he would have tried to keep it hidden for as long as possible, if the income from the two girls had dropped then Rae would have wanted to know why, but perhaps Hamer had made up the difference in a desperate attempt to buy more time?
Marnie sighed, opened her eyes, scrunched up the bag and dumped it onto the passenger seat. It was all guesswork on her part, for all she knew, Hamer could have been working alone and if he had then it threw more light onto the illusive Tom Conway, after all, he had quizzed Emma and she had admitted to giving him Hamer’s name – and a few short hours later, he was dead.
Flicking on the wipers, Marnie looked out at the windswept street, water ran along the flooded roadside gutters, the rain heavy in the pitiful glimmer of the streetlights.
By rights, she knew she should have been at home getting some sleep but the thought of returning to the empty house only to be locked in a nightmare of the burning house and the monster Boland on his maniacal rampage made her shudder. Sliding the car into gear, she pulled out onto the shimmering rain-slicked road, her mind working through the facts, when the name Conway floated to the surface she held onto it and got her foot down.
40
Tony Collier drove through the gates, cigarette clamped between his teeth, rubbing at his tired eyes. It had been a long but productive day, ever since he had started his little enterprise with the man called Williams the money had been rolling in. Pulling up in front of the house, he smiled and shook his head, all these years he had worked as a builder with a small sideline in selling grass and pills. But ever since Williams had approached him with the plan, the building side of things had taken a back seat. Now, the two, small, terraced houses he had in Grafton had been put to good use. He had owned the properties for three years and in all that time he had not made a penny from the rent. The truth was the bastard tenants had simply moved in and paid the bond and then the cash had stopped and it had taken him six months to get rid of the scrounging pricks and cost him over three grand in solicitor’s fees in the process. Turning the engine off, he sat behind the wheel, the smile splitting his face. The houses were now occupied and boy was the money flowing in. Williams supplied the scrubbers and all he had to do was collect the cash and take his slice before handing the rest over to the thickset man with the dark eyes. He thought of the holdall beneath his bed, crammed with cash, more money than he had ever seen in his life and he hadn’t had to lift a finger to earn a penny.
Pushing the car door open, he stepped out and looked at the detached house, it was only seven years old and already the window frames were yellowed and cracked with some of the roof tiles lifting. He had built it at a time when the housing market had been booming and he had legitimate cash in the bank. The trouble was, he had used cheap materials to build the place, the intention was to sell it on at a massive profit. Then the recession had hit like a ton of wet builders’ sand, and business had dried up leaving him with the large four-bedroomed house that was slowly falling down around his ears.
Still, if things carried on as they were then it wouldn’t matter, he would make a killing and then fuck off to Spain for a life of sun, sand, and doing sod all.
Pulling the house keys from his pocket, he crunched over the weed-infested gravel before pushing the key into the lock, when the door swung open he frowned in confusion. The cavernous hallway was in darkness and he hesitated on the doorstep.
‘I’m sure I locked it this morning,’ he mumbled, reaching in and flicking the switch on the wall.
The overhead strip light struggled to life as he closed the door, the frown still in place.
‘Must be losing my marbles,’ he said shrugging out of his jacket and tossing it onto the banister rail as he went past on his way to the kitchen. Flicking on the light he grabbed a bottle from the huge beer-filled, American-style fridge.
He pulled the cap off with his teeth while he walked upstairs, his mouth stretching wide in a yawn as he reached the top. Collier paused to take a glug from the bottle before turning right towards his bedroom, he would spend the next hour sitting on his bed counting the cash, knowing that by the time he finished he would be sporting the widest grin in Kirkhead.
Pushing open the bedroom door he sighed, tilting his head to take another satisfying drink from the bottle.
He had his eyes closed, head tilted, when the machete sliced into his exposed throat, blood sprayed out in a huge gout, the machete carved through muscle and bone severing his head. He fell sideways, the bottle of beer still clasped in his hand as he hit the floor. His head fell with a dull thud, his eyes looked up at Williams in shock, then rage, his mouth opened and closed a few times, then his gaze went blank.
Beer continued to trickle out the bottle, mingling with the red.
Williams looked down at his handiwork, his dark eyes devoid of emotion.
Ten minutes later, he left the house, the machete had been washed beneath the power shower; the bag of cash held easily in his right hand, he walked down the drive whistling as he went.
41
The tarmac ended and potholes took over. Marnie slowed down as the car bumped over the rough surface, to her right were open fields of scrub grass, on the left was a long line of terraced houses. One or two had lights shining in the downstairs windows, the rest were in darkness; the headlights lanced out along the lane showing a bank of trees in the distance.
When she came to the last house in the row she pulled over to the kerb and turned off the engine and lights. The darkness swooped in and she leaned over and opened the glove compartment, lifting out the heavy, metal-cased torch. Climbing out, she flicked it on, following the beam to the darkened house.
She didn’t bother ringing the doorbell, instead she went straight to the window and trained the light into the small, bare, living room. The beam swept around the empty space, revealing black shining asphalt and a tiled fireplace with an ancient-looking gas fire, the elements toast-brown. A closed door on the far wall no doubt led into the kitchen, while a set of bare wooden stairs in the lounge climbed to the rooms above.
When the dog barked, she turned and trained the light along the lane, the man raised a hand to shield his eyes so she lowered the beam slightly, watching as he walked slowly towards her.
The black Labrador arrived first and Marnie offered her hand, letting the animal take a sniff, tail wagging, before it trundled past and sat at the front door of the house next door.
‘You’re wasting your time, there’s no one in,’ the man said as he came to a halt and blew his bulbous nose on a piece of patterned kitchen roll.
Marnie kept the light trained at the ground between them, the man looked to be in his sixties, his ears stuck out almost at right angles, forced down and out by the flat cap he was wearing.
‘Does a Mr Conway live here?’ she asked, holding out her warrant card.
‘Used to,’ the man replied. Smiling, he thrust out his hand, ‘My name’s Bill Armitage.’
Marnie shook hands, noticing despite his age, Bill still had a firm handshake.
‘I take it you know Conway?’ she asked as the first spots of rain fell from a pitch-black sky devoid of stars.
Bill Armitage lifted the cap and gave his scalp a quick scratch before plopping it back on his head. ‘Oh aye, I knew all the family.’
‘So, no one lives here anymore?’
‘Place has been empty for the past eight years.’
‘Eight years?’ she asked in surprise.
‘I’m afraid so.’
Marnie glanced left at the darkened front window. ‘What happened to the owners?’ she asked, turning back to Armitage.
‘Well, George and Martha Conway lived here for donkey’s years …’
‘They had a son called Tom?’ she asked.
Bill slipped his hands into his pockets, at Marnie’s back the dog whimpered.
‘Can you give me a minute while I put the dog away, she’s owd and not keen on the rain.’
Marni
e smiled. ‘No problem.’
Bill hesitated for a moment. ‘In fact, I was going to put the kettle on and it seems daft standing out here so why don’t you come in and have a brew.’
Marnie checked her watch, by rights she should be at home planning tomorrow’s must-do list then getting some sleep, and then she thought of Emma Winstanley and Drew Watkins and she nodded. ‘A coffee would be lovely,’ she replied.
Bill grinned, showing a flash of pearl-white dentures as he walked towards the front door. ‘I think I might even have some Hobnobs knocking about,’ he slipped his key into the door and pushed it open.
Clicking off the torch, Marnie smiled and followed him into the house.
42
Jimmy Rae picked up the glass and tossed the whisky down his throat. Easing back in the chair, he tried to think things through, the problem was the fury clouding his mind was making rational thought difficult.
‘Come on, man, get a bloody grip,’ he hissed, downing another glass before rising to his feet and heading upstairs. Pushing his bedroom door open he headed over and flopped down on the bed.
He thought back over the years to when he and Tam had first started the business. There had been one or two who had tried to put a stop to their fun and games, one was now anchored to the bottom of a local reservoir, the other had been buried beneath the new ring road, flattened into the gravel by a twenty-ton steamroller.
Leaning across the bed, he opened the drawer and lifted out the small black book, clicking on the lamp, he eased back into the pillows and started to turn the pages.
The book contained a list of people who either worked for him or he had done business with in the past. Jimmy flicked the pages, his eyes searching for any name that jumped out at him. The trouble was, most of the names were of small-time dealers and pimps, and he was sure that whoever was doing this wasn’t a scrote from off the street.
Cut The Threads: A Serial Killer Thriller That Will Keep You Hooked (DS Marnie Hammond Book 2) Page 12