A Promise to the Dead: A gripping crime thriller with a brilliant twist

by Victoria Jenkins

  ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, indicating the chaos that surrounded them. ‘Everything from the other rooms has had to be stored in here.’

  Alex waved a hand, dismissing the apology. The last thing Mrs Bryant needed to think about was the state of her house.

  ‘How long have you lived here?’

  ‘Five years. Just over five.’ She pressed the fingertips of her right hand to her forehead as though pushing back a headache. ‘We saved for so long to move here.’ Her eyes glassed over, shocked to tears by the turn of events that had overtaken this seemingly normal Monday.

  ‘I don’t understand this,’ she said, turning to Alex. ‘I mean, there’s got to be a mistake or something, hasn’t there?’

  There was a noise behind them and the women turned to see a uniformed officer in the doorway. Alex excused herself and followed the officer down the hallway to the back of the house. It seemed Mrs Bryant hadn’t dared to venture out into the back garden since she had arrived home, not wanting to confront what was waiting there. Either that or she had been advised by one of the builders not to.

  Alex found herself in the shell of what had previously been the kitchen, recognisable only by a few remaining units and a stopcock on the far wall. The room stood bare and cold, tiny shards of broken tiles cracking underfoot as she followed the man to the back door. Outside, the builders had been in the process of digging up the garden ready to lay foundations for an extension. Their machinery stood silent now, turned off at the macabre discovery beneath the patio slabs. Tools lay on the ground, abandoned beside flasks of tea.

  ‘The pathologist has been held up in traffic,’ the officer explained.

  In the garden, two builders were standing with a second uniformed officer, the three of them grouped by the fence as though keeping a safe distance from the chilling sight that had been excavated just feet away from them. Alex stepped towards the hole in the ground, seeing first the length of fabric that the body had been wrapped in. It might once have been any colour, but the earth had turned it a muddy brown, and time and insects had worn it threadbare. Whichever builder had pulled back the material to see what was hidden within it had dropped it back over the remains, concealing it once again from sight. Perhaps he had done so in an effort to protect his colleagues, she thought, or maybe it had been for his own benefit, as though covering the body might erase the memory of the discovery from his consciousness.

  Alex took a latex glove from her pocket and put it on before crouching beside the hole. The fabric was recognisable as a curtain by the row of plastic hooks that could be seen running along one edge, more than half the hooks now missing. She hadn’t seen a pair of curtains with that kind of hook in a number of years. Her parents had once had a similar pair in their living room, and the memory dragged Alex back in time for a moment, a familiar tug of nostalgia clenching her gut as it had so often during that past year.

  When she leaned forward to pull back the fabric, a human skull greeted her. The dark orbs in which a pair of eyes had once been now stared unseeing past her. The featureless bone was still connected to the torso of the skeleton, its arms crossed across its front. Alex didn’t need a degree in forensic pathology to know the remains had been here for a number of years.

  ‘Who found it?’ She looked up at the builders. The younger of the two – a man no older than his early twenties who was wearing a beanie hat and an expression of panic that looked so ingrained it might as well have been tattooed on his face – raised his hand tentatively, as though he was still at school and confessing to something that would get him sent to the head teacher’s office.

  ‘How long have the two of you been working on the extension?’

  ‘Just started last week,’ the other man told her. He turned his head as he coughed. ‘Found some unexpected things in my time, but this …’ he added, shaking his head as he dragged the back of his hand across his mouth.

  ‘We’ll need you both to give statements, if you’ve not already done so.’

  Alex stood and went back into the house, where she found Natalie Bryant still in the front room, waiting for her. She had been crying, and at the sight of Alex, she quickly wiped her eyes.

  ‘You said you’ve been here just over five years, Mrs Bryant. Do you know who lived here before that?’

  ‘There was an elderly couple living here. They died. I don’t know much more than that, I’m sorry. I don’t really remember much about that time, if I’m honest – I’d not long given birth and I wasn’t in a great place. It all seems such a long time ago now. This house was supposed to be our fresh start. We’ve been saving for the extension since we moved in. The thought of it being there all that time …’ She ran her palm over her face before pressing the heel of her hand against her right eye. ‘Sorry … I don’t mean “it”. I just … You know what I mean.’

  ‘You have a son?’ Alex said, looking at a framed photograph that lay at the top of a box filled with books, stationery and sporting trophies.

  Natalie nodded. ‘Rhys. He’ll be six in the summer. Thank God he’s at school and hasn’t had to see any of this. How would I explain it to him?’ She sidestepped a pile of boxes as she moved to the window and pushed aside the curtain. ‘You’d think we’d done something wrong,’ she said, looking at the neighbours who were still lurking on the opposite pavement. ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘Is there somewhere you can stay tonight?’ Alex asked.

  ‘We can go to my in-laws – they’re not far.’

  ‘Your husband …’

  ‘I’ve called him. He’s on his way home.’

  When reports of the builder’s call had made it to the incident room, the initial assumption had been that the body of Matthew Lewis or Kieran Robinson had been found, but it had soon become obvious that the remains at 14 Oak Tree Close were not those of anyone who had gone missing recently. Alex was unsure of her response to learning that the discovery didn’t involve either of the young men the team were currently searching for. It meant there was a chance both Matthew and Kieran were still alive, but on the other hand it meant a whole new case would be competing for their attention and burdening their workload.

  It never rains, she thought.

  She left the room and opened the front door, grateful for the gust of fresh air that was blown into the hallway. Outside on the street, the gathering of neighbours had grown, the increased police presence attracting greater attention. Alex went across to them and raised a hand. ‘If you could all move back, please, away from the tape.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ a man asked.

  ‘Just move back, please.’

  She turned to a uniformed officer who was standing nearby and rolled her eyes. It never failed to surprise her how nosy people could be, as well as how inappropriate.

  Her mobile began ringing in her coat pocket. It was one of the DCs back at the station.

  ‘Boss. Got something for you on the Matthew Lewis case. How far are you from Caerphilly Mountain?’

  Thornhill was only a few miles from Caerphilly, just over the border between the counties on the edge of Cardiff. The road on which Matthew Lewis’s car had been found was a five-minute drive from Alex’s current location.

  ‘Close. Why, what’s happened?’ She almost added the word ‘now’. They had wanted leads, but she could have done without everything turning up at once.

  ‘Someone’s found something in one of the fields. Ticket stub from the rugby match on Saturday.’

  Alex’s initial hope that something useful had been discovered there was quashed. ‘The stadium’s quite a big place,’ she said, cynicism etched through her tone. Tens of thousands of people had attended the match in Cardiff that Saturday; it seemed unrealistic to expect the ticket stub to prove fruitful in any way.

  ‘How many of them might have been in that field, though?’ the officer reasoned.

  Alex accepted the point. If nothing else, it offered a faint glimmer of hope in what had until now been a case halted by a series of dea
d ends.

  Twelve

  Seeing the police car waiting further along the lane, Alex pulled into an area designed for passing other vehicles and cut the engine. She knew these lanes well: her own home was not far from here, just a few minutes’ drive down the other side of the mountain towards the town centre.

  The police car was parked in front of a metal gate. If her memory served her correctly, the gate was usually closed. A couple of horses had once roamed around in the field beyond it, often lingering where they would be visible to passing cars, their sad eyes gazing wistfully out. Alex couldn’t remember having seen them for a number of years now, and she wondered what had happened to them.

  She had called Chloe on her way there, arranging for them to meet on the mountain. Chloe had been on her way back to the station, nearly at the A470, and the lanes had involved only a brief detour. Chloe had parked near the spot where Matthew Lewis’s car had been found and was now waiting with a uniformed officer and the man who had found the ticket stub earlier that day. He was in his late sixties and dressed as though he was about to embark on an Arctic expedition, a thick padded coat zipped up to his chin and a hat pulled down over his ears. A terrier tugged at the lead he was holding.

  ‘Didn’t think too much of it at first,’ the man told them, ‘but then I realised it was for the match on Saturday. Bit strange being up here, this far from town. Then I saw the news about that young couple. Strange business, that.’

  Alex shot Chloe a look, both women sharing the same thought. The zone searches that had been carried out overnight on Saturday had stretched half a mile in each direction from the point at which Matthew Lewis’s car had been found. This land was over a mile away. If the ticket stub belonged to Matthew Lewis, what had he been doing so far away from the car? Why had he been in this field?

  She took the stub from the uniformed officer. It had a serial code along its edge: it would be easy enough to find out who had purchased it. ‘Where exactly did you find it?’

  The man stepped across the muddy ground at the entrance to the field. ‘Just there,’ he said, pointing to an area part way into the field. ‘I had to chase the dog in here. Should have kept her on her lead.’

  Alex looked back at the wet ground they had just crossed, silently cursing herself for not having extended the search this far. They had assumed Matthew had gone missing much closer to the spot at which his car had been found. The land was pitted with various indentations that had churned up the field’s boundary, but the previous night’s rain had ruined their hopes of finding anything that might prove useful. If the ticket stub had been discovered yesterday, they might have been able to identify a vehicle from the tread marks left in the mud.

  Her disappointment obvious, she followed Chloe into the field, leaving the dog owner and the officer still standing near the gate.

  ‘Reckon he’s legit?’ she asked, catching Chloe up.

  ‘Him?’ Chloe nodded back in the direction of the gate.

  ‘Why’s he dressed like that?’

  Chloe smiled. ‘You think he’s hiding something under there?’

  ‘Very funny. You never know.’

  ‘Except when you do.’

  ‘Why was he up here? Not him, I mean. Matthew.’

  ‘No idea. But look.’ They were nearing the middle of the field, where the land, having previously inclined, now reached its peak. Alex followed Chloe’s gaze. Ahead of them, almost hidden from sight of anyone passing along the lane, was an old farmhouse. Its chimney stack could be seen outlined against the woodland that stood behind it, with the upstairs windows – most of the glass smashed and the frames rotted – visible as they moved forward.

  ‘Never knew that was here,’ Alex said.

  The building was small and in a state of disrepair. Part of the roof was missing and the downstairs windows had also been smashed. What had once been a garage stood to one side, its broken doors hanging loose, the inside of the building now victim to the effects of the inclement weather. Moss clung to the woodwork in thick clumps.

  Alex followed Chloe as her colleague headed towards the farmhouse.

  ‘What was he doing here?’ Chloe asked, thinking aloud.

  Alex said nothing. For the moment, they were only assuming that Matthew had been here. Even if the ticket stub turned out to have belonged to him, it didn’t mean that he had ventured any further into the field. There was also the possibility that someone else had come into possession of the stub and it was he or she who had dropped it up here.

  Yet Alex doubted the probability of such an event. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed unlikely that, despite the fact that so many other people had been to the match on Saturday, any of them had had reason to be in this field. Matthew had been here, she felt sure of that. Had he left the car and walked up here to find help getting petrol? If so, what was it that had drawn him into the field? It wasn’t far from the spot where his car had been found, but in the pitch dark, and with no phone, walking over a mile seemed an almost reckless decision to have made. Maybe he had had no other option.

  They stopped outside the garage. Inside, ancient shelving units housed rusted paint tins and tools that were probably of no use for anything any more. There were no signs of life around the building and no vehicles to be seen either inside the garage or out.

  ‘Why would he have come here looking for petrol?’ Alex said. ‘Or help in getting any, at least. You can see this place hasn’t been lived in for years.’

  ‘Perhaps he couldn’t tell that in the darkness.’

  ‘It’s the only thing that makes sense – the only possible reason we have for him to have been this far away from the car. I don’t believe anyone else was with them, at least not when they stopped. Someone else came on the scene later, after Matthew had left the car.’

  ‘So you think Matthew wasn’t even there when Stacey was shot? Could he be hiding somewhere, scared of taking the blame for her murder?’

  ‘If he wasn’t there, he might not even know she’s dead.’ Alex turned to scan their surroundings. ‘There are no other houses between here and the spot where the car was found, are there? This would have been the first place he would have reached.’

  ‘Why not just call someone?’

  ‘There’s no signal up on the mountain road,’ Alex told her, knowing this from personal experience. She had always found that there was an area of at least a mile and a half in which all mobile signal was lost. In fact, the thought that it would be an unfortunate place to break down had more than once crossed her mind as she had driven through.

  A wave of sadness swept over her. Just a little further along the mountain road, her signal was usually resumed. If Matthew had walked half a mile or so further he would have been able to call for help – if he had taken his mobile with him. Would that extra half a mile have undone whatever had happened up here? Would it have saved Stacey Cooper’s life?

  Chloe turned and looked back across the field towards the gate, where the dog walker and the police officer were still standing, both gazing in the direction in which Alex and Chloe had headed. ‘We’ve just said how remote this place is, though. We could barely see it from the road, and that was in daylight.’

  Alex put her hands on her hips and scanned the land around her. ‘Maybe he knew it was here somehow.’

  ‘Alex.’ Chloe gestured ahead, her attention drawn to a patch of earth that looked different to the rest. She moved forward and crouched down, running a hand across the uneven surface, lifting a handful of soil and letting it fall through her fingers. ‘This has been disturbed. Look.’

  Alex followed an L-shaped track mark that had been scoured into the ground. The lines were straight, carefully outlined, the indentations methodically etched. The soil between them had been turned over, as though it had been half dug before being filled in again.

  ‘Christ,’ she muttered.

  A picture was beginning to form: something far more sinister than she might have imagined. Was Matth
ew Lewis here, buried just feet beneath where they stood?

  Thirteen

  Dan was sitting at his desk in the incident room. On the computer screen in front of him was a list of names and dates: the records relating to the ownership of number 14 Oak Tree Close, Thornhill. The house was a 1960s red-brick build, with a stone porch above the doorway and protruding upstairs windows to the front. It seemed as innocuous as any other semi-detached property on any other housing estate. No one could have guessed at the dark secrets its patio was concealing, and news of the discovery at the property had caused shock waves throughout the local community. Unearthing the secret had been one thing, but getting to the truths that had been buried with the body was likely to prove a much more complex task.

  Until recently, Dan had kept an open mind about most things. Though the job had at times been more challenging than he could ever have anticipated as a young man signing up to his chosen career, he had managed to stay positive about most aspects of life. People were good in the main, and that goodness prevailed over evil in the majority of cases. Only it didn’t seem that way any more.

  He returned his focus to the screen, shaking himself free of his dark thoughts. Number 14 had been purchased five years earlier by Natalie and Jonathan Bryant, having previously belonged to a woman named Carol Smith. Before her, the house was owned by a couple called Stan and Peggy Smith, who had lived there for almost forty years. It wasn’t an uncommon surname, but Dan wondered whether Carol Smith was the couple’s daughter, and whether she had inherited the house from her parents.

  He was in the process of trying to find the whereabouts of Carol Smith when Jake came over from the other side of the incident room. He was carrying a mug of tea, though the dark bags that lay heavy beneath his eyes made him look as though he had stayed up late the previous night enjoying something far stronger.

  ‘You heard about Matthew Lewis?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The burial site up on the farmland. Nothing there.’