Dead Memories: An addictive and gripping crime thriller

by Angela Marsons

  Twenty-Seven

  Alison tried to shake the feeling of doing something wrong as she entered the front foyer of Worcestershire Royal Hospital. She told herself that visiting a sick person was not a crime.

  She was well aware that Inspector Stone had wanted more of an explanation. She had wanted the entire brief, word for word, as to her role in the case. And much as she would have loved to stay and fend her off she’d known she had a twenty-mile drive down the M5 to the hospital to make it before visiting hours ended.

  Alison knew they weren’t as strict on the timings in ICU if you were visiting alone and made no fuss. In the silent cloistered environment of the gravely ill any cough or chair scrape was magnified as though in church or a library. Nurses moved around soundlessly in foam-bottomed shoes or crocs amongst the low beeps and tings of life-preserving equipment.

  ‘How is she?’ Alison asked Valerie, the ward sister, as she entered.

  ‘Same,’ she said, with a kindly smile.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, heading over to the bed at the end. She removed her jacket and sat before taking a good look at the woman in the bed.

  The bruises had barely faded in the six days since Alison had first seen Beverly lying here. Her face was still stained purple and yellow, with an occasional inch of pale cream flesh peeking out from beneath. And the marks didn’t stop there. The plum-coloured skin continued over her body where she’d been kicked and punched both before and after the vicious rape.

  Alison shuddered as she thought about what this woman had endured.

  She brought her gaze back to Beverly’s face; the stretched, shiny skin that had ballooned over her left eye. The shaved head bearing the scars of major surgery to reduce the swelling and bleeding on the brain.

  Alison took the cool, smooth hand and stroked the thumb rhythmically.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered.

  ‘You have nothing to be sorry for,’ said Valerie, startling her. She hadn’t heard the ward sister approach. Damn those crocs. ‘You didn’t do this to her.’

  Oh, but I did, Alison almost said, but managed to stop herself just in time.

  ‘I know,’ she said, recovering quickly. ‘But I was away on business and I can’t help but think if I’d been—’

  ‘Shh now,’ she said, kindly, straightening the sheet around Beverly’s shoulders. ‘That’s not the kind of talk she needs to hear. You need to tell her all the things you’re going to do once she’s better.’

  Alison appreciated the optimism that didn’t match the prognosis, which was little more than a shrug of your shoulders and wait-and-see assessment.

  ‘Talk to her about shopping trips,’ Valerie said, squeezing her shoulder gently. ‘Talk to her about a weekend at a spa or a trip to the theatre. I’m sure that’s what your sister wants to hear.’

  Alison nodded and fought away the reason for her own uneasiness and feeling of wrongdoing.

  This woman was not her sister.

  Alison was an only child.

  Twenty-Eight

  Kim tried to keep her face neutral as Alison entered the squad room for the morning briefing and sat at the spare desk.

  She’d put in a call to Woody immediately following their conversation the previous night to be told he was giving some kind of speech at an awards ceremony. She’d been sitting outside his office at 6 a.m. but he hadn’t shown. A cynical person might have thought he was actively avoiding her. Realistically she knew he wasn’t. Woody always had the courage of his convictions and would never back down in the face of her anger, but that didn’t stop her wanting to question it.

  She’d spent the night pacing and raging wondering why the hell he felt she needed babysitting to this degree. And she wanted to tell him he was wrong.

  And if he was avoiding her it wasn’t going to last for long.

  ‘Okay, guys, what we got on the CCTV for Amy and Mark around Hollytree?’

  ‘Very little so far, boss,’ Penn said, tapping on his keyboard. ‘Got this one snatch of ’em coming out of Brierley Hill Asda at around 4 p.m. on Sunday from the car park camera. The footage is grainy at best and Amy’s carrying something, but still waiting on Asda for footage around the store. They head down Little Cottage Lane and disappear.’

  ‘Keep on it, Penn,’ Kim said.

  Any footage of them on that final day might help.

  ‘Stace, I know you were doing background and we got some ourselves from Amy’s mother,’ Kim said. ‘Apparently, Amy fell for Mark, literally right outside Tesco. Not exactly a fairy-tale beginning but one has to wonder if part of the charm for Amy was in trying to save him and then got hooked on the stuff herself.’

  ‘Typical rescuer syndrome,’ Alison interjected. ‘Mainly females who focus on and worry about their partner more than themselves. Normally drawn to people with depression, anxieties or addictions. Love equates to work and suffering instead of a healthy, balanced relationship.’

  ‘Precisely, anyway,’ Kim continued, ‘Amy’s mother was mugged and beaten a few months ago and feels Amy and Mark were behind it after she refused to give her daughter money. Apparently, the woman had tried everything, even getting her friends to try and talk sense into her but nothing worked; she even came to the hospital high and was thrown off the ward.’

  ‘Visiting her own mother?’ Stacey asked, with disgust.

  Kim understood Stacey’s disgust. The constable was very close to her parents and could never picture herself disrespecting her mum in such a way, but Kim understood what drugs could do to someone. They eroded the person you were, attacked and destroyed the feelings you had for other people so that it became the most important thing in your life. Getting high the only priority: above family, love, feelings. It destroyed everything. The accusation from Mrs Wilde about her daughter being involved in the vicious attack was not beyond the realms of possibility despite how unpalatable it was.

  ‘Stace, there was some kind of altercation between Mark Johnson and Harry Jenks at Stourbridge Community Centre. Not mentioned to us by Jenks himself but by a co-worker. I’d like to know what it was about but, more importantly, why Jenks is hiding it.’

  Stacey nodded and made a note.

  ‘And as you know, we have an unknown victim found within a junked car. Keats, Mitch and Doctor A are all working to extract Rubik from his cube.’

  She saw the look of disapproval pass over Alison’s face and turned her way.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s disrespectful,’ Alison said.

  ‘You think?’

  She nodded.

  Kim took a breath. She nodded to the photos of the cube already on the board. ‘You think he gives a shit what we call him?’ she asked, not waiting for an answer. ‘As you well know there are coping strategies for what we deal with every day and humour is one of them. It keeps us sane.’ She glanced across at Bryant. ‘Well, most of us anyway. It helps us cope and function and I make no apology for that,’ she said, feeling her phone vibrate in her pocket but she didn’t need to look to see what it was.

  ‘You mention the word disrespectful, but we have to find a way to personalise every victim that comes our way. Once we have a name the victim becomes a person, a life, a soul.’

  Kim headed for the door and paused. ‘Or we could scrub out his new name and replace it with “unknown subject”; now in my opinion that would be disrespectful.’

  As she took the stairs two at a time Kim couldn’t help wondering if the two of them could make it to the end of this case alive.

  Twenty-Nine

  ‘Ah, Stone, here already,’ Woody observed, switching on his computer.

  Oh yes, she’d bribed Jack on the desk with his favourite apple pie from the canteen to let her know the minute he arrived.

  ‘Sir, I respectfully—’

  ‘There’s a contradiction,’ he said, pointing to the chair.

  She ignored it.

  He pointed again and narrowed his eyes.

  She sat.

 
‘Sir, I don’t need Alison bloody Lowe babysitting me on this case and watching my every move.’

  ‘Continue,’ he instructed.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘You’ve probably come up with a whole litany of reasons to toss at me and I’d like to give you the opportunity to voice them all so that your time wasn’t completely wasted.’

  She took a breath and exhaled loudly. ‘You’re not going to budge, are you?’

  ‘No,’ he answered.

  ‘But why her?’ she insisted. ‘We don’t work well together.’

  He lifted his head from rummaging in his top drawer. ‘Are you being serious, Stone? You honestly think I have the time to find someone you would work well with? I’ll settle for tolerance and at least Alison has the backbone to fight back.’

  ‘But you never said…’

  ‘I said you needed help but I didn’t specify the type or package in which it would come.’

  ‘I just wish you’d have told—’

  ‘Stone,’ he said, quietly. ‘Last night I attended a ceremony to award the George Medal posthumously to a female police officer killed by an exploding car bomb seven months ago. The award was presented to a grieving husband who didn’t let go of his two-year-old child the whole night and accepted the medal in front of an oversize photo of his dead wife. So, right now, if your feelings are a little bit hurt, I couldn’t care less.’

  Kim had no response to offer.

  There had been so much that she’d wanted to say, had felt entitled to say, and right now the words would not come.

  She had reached the door before he spoke again.

  ‘You know, Stone, for someone so intelligent there are times when you really can be a bit dense.’

  ‘Sir?’ she said, turning. Had her boss really just called her dense?

  ‘My apologies for the terminology, so let me put this another way. A few years before my wife died she bought me a letter opener. Beautiful it was. Carved wooden handle inscribed with my name. Shiny, thin blade in a leather presentation box. Thing is I’d managed to open envelopes perfectly well without one for forty years but it was the best damn backscratcher I ever had. Got that spot right between your shoulder blades. Not its purpose but…’

  ‘I get it,’ she said, allowing a brief smile to touch her lips.

  ‘Stone, this killer managed to get two young people into a block of flats and murder them without being noticed. We’re either looking at two killers or one very clever one and you need every resource to make sure this doesn’t happen again.’

  ‘Agreed,’ she said, opening the door.

  ‘And one more thing,’ he said.

  Kim was beginning to feel like the headline act at a concert being called back for one more encore.

  ‘Go easy on her, eh? She’s not as tough as she thinks she is.’

  Kim nodded and finally left the room, her interest piqued.

  What the hell was that all about?

  Thirty

  Kim read the text message that had beeped its arrival as Woody had finally finished with her.

  She frowned, followed its instructions and headed down to the cafeteria.

  She found Alison and Bryant sitting in the corner nearest the kitchen. Alison had clearly missed breakfast and had opted for toast and orange juice, Bryant a mug of tea, and a large coffee appeared to be waiting for her.

  She wound her way through the tables occupied with officers tucking into full English breakfasts. Other healthier options were available and would disappear from the chiller cabinet throughout the day, but right now it was all about the protein.

  ‘Feel better now, Inspector?’ Alison asked, taking notebooks from her briefcase.

  ‘About what?’ she asked, sitting down. Woody may have given Alison access to her case but she wasn’t getting access to her mind.

  ‘Well I assume that you’ve waited all night to speak to DCI Woodward after what I told you last night and you’ve been to see him at the earliest opportunity to have it out with him, and although nothing has changed you have lodged your objection; so I’m asking if you now feel better about my involvement in this case?’

  ‘S’pose so but what are we doing down here?’ she asked, as a cool breeze of air from the air con unit above travelled down her back. Not that she was complaining.

  ‘I assume, knowing you, that you haven’t changed your mind about involving your team since we last spoke?’

  Kim shook her head.

  ‘Given that I felt it better to have this conversation in private, I have no interest in being distracted by efforts to identify the unknown subject in the metal.’

  Kim admired her refusal to call him Rubik.

  ‘So, it’s best we do this away from the others.’

  Kim looked to Bryant who shrugged.

  ‘What exactly are we doing?’

  ‘Right now, your team is looking for independent leads and clues, finding grudges, links, people they may have upset in the past, family and—’

  ‘Yes, it’s called police work and is something Bryant and I would like to be getting—’

  ‘So, we need to be looking at the other possibility,’ Alison said, completely ignoring her, causing Kim to wonder what the hell Woody had been talking about. There was not one vulnerable bone in this woman’s body.

  ‘Inspector, this double murder may somehow be linked to you, and as we can’t do that as a full team we’re going to have to do it away from the others.’

  ‘And how exactly do you propose we do this?’ Kim asked, crossing her arms.

  ‘We start by making a list,’ she answered, pushing a spare notebook and pen towards her and Bryant. ‘We make a long list of everyone you’ve managed to piss off.’

  Bryant shook his head and pushed the pad back towards Alison. ‘Sorry, but I can’t be a party to this,’ he said, seriously.

  Alison frowned. ‘Why not?’

  Kim also looked to him for an answer.

  ‘Cos I’ve only got seven years until retirement.’

  Thirty-One

  ‘Why the cafeteria?’ Stacey asked, looking around her computer screen. ‘When have you ever known the boss take a meeting in the bloody cafeteria?’

  Penn removed his headphones. ‘Well, never but I’ve only been here for—’

  ‘Never is the correct answer,’ she said. ‘And why is that woman here at all?’

  ‘If you’re gonna keep asking me questions I can’t answer I’m going back to my own work,’ he said, picking the headphones back up.

  ‘You know the boss is keeping something from us, right? I mean, even you know that,’ Stacey said, drumming her fingers on the desk.

  ‘Not sure what you’re inferring with the “even you” thing but of course I know she’s not telling us everything, so I’m guessing she has her reasons and will share when—’

  ‘Penn, do you have any normal emotional responses at all?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, when necessary,’ he said. ‘But now you’re just narked that I don’t feel the same way as you.’

  Yes, she had to admit there was an element of truth to that. She wanted him to feel as pissed off as she was feeling at being left out in the cold.

  ‘Look, she’s given us work to do so we’d best just get cracking on the things she wants.’

  ‘Okay, what do you make of Rubik?’ she asked.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered with frustration. ‘Tell me what you want me to think, I’ll think it, and then hopefully you’ll let me get back to work.’

  ‘Strange death, don’t you think?’ she asked, trying to picture the man’s entire body squashed amongst the metal.

  ‘Not really. There have been plenty of stranger deaths. There was a Brazilian guy who was killed when a cow fell through his roof. A nineteenth-century US lawyer accidentally shot himself demonstrating that a supposed victim could have shot themselves. A Canadian lawyer died throwing himself against a glass panel on the twenty-fourth floor of an office building. Glass didn’t break bu
t it popped out and he fell to his death. Another—’

  ‘Penn, where do you keep all this unnecessary information?’

  He shrugged, retrieved his headphones and this time she let him. But her brain hadn’t stopped working.

  Yes, the person inside her was hurt that she was being kept in the dark, but the investigator in her wanted to know what it was and why.

  She knew the boss wanted her to investigate Mark Johnson’s altercation with Harry Jenks at the community centre and she would, but something suddenly came back to her. When Alison had arrived the previous evening, she’d been about to say something when the boss had cut her off.

  She tried to remember it word for word: So, I hear you had a crime scene that bore sim—

  Stacey wrote it down on a Post-it note and studied it for a minute.

  She had no idea what that could mean but she made the decision she was going to do her best to find out.

  Thirty-Two

  ‘Seriously, though,’ Bryant said reaching to take the notebook back. ‘How are we gonna narrow it down to the hundreds?’

  Kim knew he had a point.

  Alison turned her way. ‘Okay, if this has anything to do with you it’s not as simple as pissing someone off. No one is going to do this because you pissed them off,’ she explained. ‘This is going to be a life ruined; someone who holds so much rage towards you that they’re prepared to kill people to make their point.’

  ‘That may have cut it by a third,’ Bryant said, starting to write names on the notepad.

  ‘Nina Croft?’ Kim questioned, looking across at his pad.

  ‘Who is she?’ Alison asked, also noting down the name.

  ‘The wife of a local councillor on one of our earliest major investigations into a children’s home called Crestwood.’

  ‘And?’