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

by Victoria Jenkins

  ‘What about Matthew?’ Chloe asked.

  ‘He wasn’t targeted. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I think—’

  She was interrupted by the ringing of her mobile phone in her hand. She looked down at the lit screen. Jake.

  Forty-Five

  He had no idea where they were or where he was being taken. He had kept track of the van’s journey for ten minutes or so, tracing each road in the map of his mind like a web spun by his own brain, more complex with each turn. Having grown up in Cardiff and lived there all his life, he knew the roads as well as anyone, yet fear had made him lose his concentration so that now the only thing he knew was that they had left Cardiff and he had no clue where he was going or why.

  He had been so naïve, he realised that now. He should have told DI King what he had found out when he had seen that list of students the previous morning and made the connection between Michael Wyatt and Oliver Barrett. With the original investigation into Barrett’s disappearance having already involved interviews with his peers at school, no one had expected to find anything new there so many years later. It was Jake who had seen the photograph; Jake who had realised that Michael Wyatt – known then as Graham Driscoll – had been in the same school year as Barrett. Proving Wyatt’s guilt was never going to be enough to get him his job back, not after what he’d done. Now he was here, alone, and no one else had any idea. Jake had never liked asking for help, or admitting that it might be needed. Now he would willingly have begged for it.

  He ran his hands along the walls of the van as it jolted over a bump. Falling to one side, he steadied himself as he tried to avoid a collision with the body lying beside him. The smell of decaying flesh made him heave, and he turned to throw up, spilling the contents of his stomach on to the floor of the van. Fighting back sobs, he tried to calm his increasing panic, fumbling around on the floor of the van for anything he might be able to use as a weapon. There was nothing but some fabric in the opposite corner, something that felt like an old blanket, worn and coarse. He thought of the photographs pinned to the evidence board in the incident room: Oliver Barrett’s remains wrapped in an old curtain. His stomach lurched and he threw up again.

  Hearing his mobile phone ringing from somewhere in the front of the vehicle, Jake turned and pounded his fists on the metal panel that separated him from Wyatt.

  ‘Stop the van!’ he shouted.

  He’d been about to tell his captor that the police would pick up their location using his mobile signal, but as soon as he alerted him to that possibility, Wyatt would throw the phone out of the window, destroying any hope Jake had of someone finding where he was.

  The van came to a sudden stop, throwing him on to his side. The hum of the engine was cut dead and he heard Wyatt get down from the driver’s side, slamming the door shut behind him. The sound of his own breaths, short and shallow, filled the darkness of the van and he braced himself for what was to come. If this man was capable of what he suspected, there was no escape for him. His only hope was that someone would find him before it was too late.

  When the van doors were pulled open, Jake’s eyes took a moment to adjust to what was in front of him. It was dark outside, the black stretch of inky sky only broken by the silhouette of Michael Wyatt. Jake froze as he scanned the man’s outline, stopping at the shape of the gun he held in his right hand. He was holding something smaller in the other hand, but Jake couldn’t distinguish what it was.

  A moment later, he threw the object into the van. It was Jake’s mobile phone.

  ‘Call her back,’ Wyatt instructed.

  Jake fumbled for the phone and unlocked it with clumsy fingers. Six missed calls: Alex. There were several others from Chloe and Dan. At some point he had resented each of these people: their popularity, their positions, their characters. He had envied them in ways he would never have admitted, even to himself. It seemed ironic now that they were the very people he wanted to see more than any other.

  With shaking hands, he tried Alex’s number and waited for the call to connect. ‘You may as well give this up,’ he told Wyatt, tightening his fingers around the phone. ‘You won’t get away with it.’

  ‘I know,’ Wyatt said, raising the gun. ‘That’s as it needs to be.’

  Jake held his free hand out in front of him as he heard the sound of ringing. ‘Okay, okay,’ he said quickly. ‘Just wait … I can help you. We can get you mitigating circumstances, okay? Your daughter’s death … it’ll be taken into consideration. There are things we can sort out … ways I can help you.’

  ‘You can bring her back to life, can you?’

  Jake’s panic-stricken face pleaded with the man, but he could see that behind his eyes there was nothing. Wyatt had sent that photograph, that finger, knowing that the police would draw closer to him sooner rather than later. He had brought them to him, knowing that he couldn’t hide the truth forever. This was a man who no longer had anything to lose, and Jake realised in that moment that there was nothing to be feared more than a person who had lost everything.

  ‘Hello? Jake?’

  They were interrupted by the sound of Alex’s voice: something once synonymous to Jake with reproach was now his only source of reassurance. Wyatt waved his left hand, instructing Jake to speak to her.

  ‘Alex.’ He could hear the shake in his own voice; could hear his fear tripping across the syllables in a stutter.

  ‘Jake. Where are you?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Narrowing his eyes and looking past Wyatt, he searched for signs of something familiar that might offer a clue. It was too dark, though, and there was nothing but ringing in his ears and empty blackness ahead of him.

  He watched Wyatt step into the van and sit with his back against the wall, the rifle propped on one knee, its barrel still aimed at him. The space between them was small and there wasn’t enough room to try to get past him and out of the van. If he tried it, Wyatt had only to shoot him to end his attempt at escape. The version of Jake that had woken up that morning might have tried to wrestle the weapon from him, but he realised now that trying to be a hero meant putting his life at even greater risk. It occurred to him now that had he played by the rules in the first place – had he done things in the sensible way, the way his police training had taught him to – he wouldn’t now find himself in this situation. The best thing he could do was try to buy himself time and keep Wyatt talking so that their location could be traced.

  But in his heart, he feared it was already too late for that.

  ‘Talk to me, Jake. Is Wyatt with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is anyone else there?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where you are?’

  ‘No.’ His voice cracked, fear escaping him in a strangled sob. ‘Alex, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Listen to me, Jake, you don’t need to apologise now. I want you to try to keep calm, okay? Does Wyatt have a gun with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a brief moment of silence that to Jake felt like an age, and the feeling of wanting to be close to Sam was overpowering; so much so that for the briefest moment it even managed to eclipse the fear he felt. He wanted to apologise to him for everything he had done. He had treated him so badly, always taking what he could with no thought for anything but his own fulfilment. Now he supposed he was paying the price for years of selfishness.

  ‘Help is on its way, okay?’

  But the pause had already given Alex away. There was no help coming, Jake knew that: they had no idea where he was. She was good at what she did, but not even Alex was convincing enough to reassure him that he was going to get out of this.

  Wyatt waved his free hand towards Jake, gesturing for the phone. He snatched it from Jake’s hand, keeping the gun pointed at him. With a tap to the screen, he put the call on loudspeaker.

  ‘Jake? Jake, are you still there?’

  ‘For now,’ Michael Wyatt told her.

  Forty-Six

&nb
sp; Alex’s hand tightened around her mobile phone. She prayed Dan might be able to track Jake’s whereabouts in time, but she knew it had already become time they didn’t have.

  The sound of Wyatt’s voice sent a chill through her. She had the feeling that they didn’t yet know the extent of this man’s crimes.

  ‘Where are you, Michael?’ She tried to keep her voice steady, unwilling to offer him the upper hand by exposing her increasing sense of panic.

  ‘That doesn’t matter now,’ he told her, his voice flat and emotionless.

  ‘Wherever you are, I want you to let Jake go. He hasn’t done anything to you, has he? You don’t need to hurt him.’

  She was trying desperately to fit the pieces of the mystery together. Why had Wyatt followed Kieran to Jake’s flat? Had he known that Kieran was gay? If Kieran’s murder had been a hate crime, just where did Oliver Barrett come into the picture? Chloe’s theory that this was more to do with love than hate seemed more than a possibility now. If Paul Ellis’s accusation was true, then it seemed likely that Stan Smith could have abused Oliver. Was she right in what she suspected, that there had been some kind of relationship between Wyatt and Barrett: a relationship that Stan Smith had found out about and had punished them for? Had Michael Wyatt – Graham Driscoll – been there? Just what had he seen?

  ‘Talk to me, Michael. We can sort this out.’

  ‘He said the same.’

  Behind Alex, there was a loud bang – metal against metal – followed by a second, each shattering the silence that had surrounded her. She turned to the noise, but the garage door had swung shut and she couldn’t see what was going on. She only knew that Chloe had gone back inside with Wyatt’s wife. She still didn’t suspect the woman of any involvement in her husband’s crimes; it seemed her only crime was ignorance. For now, Alex’s priority had to be keeping Michael on the line. The longer she kept him talking, the greater her chance of saving Jake’s life.

  ‘He’s right. This can end now, Michael – no one else has to get hurt. Let Jake go unharmed and we can talk about it, okay?’

  ‘Talk about what?’

  Was this some sort of game, Alex wondered, or was Michael Wyatt a true sociopath? He was speaking as though he had no concept of the severity of his crimes. He had helped lead the police to where he was, and he had done so on his own terms. No, it wasn’t a game, she thought. He knew exactly what he was doing.

  ‘Help me understand,’ she said. She realised she was still far from comprehending the motives behind the man’s crimes. She was yet to know for certain whether the ground that had been dug had been intended as a burial site for Kieran Robinson, or even whether Wyatt had been there at all. Getting him to talk would be the only way to find out, but with each moment that passed, his truths seemed to only be getting further away from her.

  ‘It’s too late for that now.’

  ‘It’s never too late, Michael. I think I know what happened to you. I think if you talk to me, we can make some sense of all this. No one else has to get hurt.’

  She didn’t believe that what had happened to Michael as a teenager could ever be made sense of, but if she didn’t at least try, Jake’s situation only became bleaker. She knew she could only imagine what might have happened to Graham Driscoll to make him the man he had become. She had a feeling she might have worked out part of his story, but she would need him to clarify the details.

  ‘You don’t know anything. I don’t need to explain myself to you.’ Michael’s tone was unchanged: he remained distant, remote, as though he was somewhere far removed from what was happening; somewhere far from the things he was responsible for. Was that how he had managed to lead his double life, she wondered: successful businessman and grieving father by day; hunter and murderer by night? Had he kept himself distanced from the truth so that he never had to face up to what he really was?

  She supposed that in their own way, that was what everyone was doing.

  She tried to travel back in time with him, to the place where this had all started, attempting to piece together what had happened all those years earlier. She had assumed that he had been involved somehow in the murder of Oliver Barrett, but what if she was wrong? What if Stan Smith had abused Michael in the same way he had abused Paul and Oliver?

  She couldn’t risk raising the subject, not here, not now. If this was where Michael Wyatt’s vulnerabilities lay, she couldn’t predict what reaction the mere mention of Smith might provoke. If she angered him, she would be gambling with Jake’s life.

  ‘Where are you, Michael?’

  ‘Stop asking me that.’

  ‘You obviously want to talk to me. You wouldn’t have taken the phone from Jake if you didn’t. You’ve been reaching out to me all week, haven’t you? Is that what those deliveries to the station were for? I’m not going anywhere. We’ve got all the time you need. You can talk to me.’

  There was silence for a moment and Alex feared she had lost him. Then she heard him clear his throat.

  ‘Say goodbye, Detective.’

  She thought for a second that he was talking to her before realising his instruction was directed at Jake.

  ‘Alex,’ she heard Jake say, his voice high-pitched and frightened. Like a child’s, she thought, sadness lodging like a tumour in her chest. ‘Alex, I’m—’

  The sound of a gunshot pierced through the phone, as loudly as if the weapon had been fired right next to her. There was a moment of awful silence in which she could hear the blood pounding in her ears. She waited for something, but nothing followed.

  ‘Jake!’

  The line went dead.

  ‘Fuck!’ She tried Jake’s number again, but the call went unanswered. She called Dan, praying that he had some clue as to where the two men might be. When he didn’t answer, she swore again and rushed to the garage. Inside, Chloe was standing at the metal storage unit. Its doors were open and a set of bolt cutters was propped against the wall beside it. Mrs Wyatt was standing at Chloe’s side, both hands raised to her mouth.

  When Chloe turned, Alex’s attention was drawn to the box she was holding in her hands: an oblong metal container with a hinged lid. The lid was flipped back. Inside the box was a collection of small finger bones.

  Forty-Seven

  Within ten minutes, Jake’s phone had been tracked to land near the clifftop at Oxwich Bay, a stretch of beach on the south Wales coastline that during the summer months became a hot spot for families and surfers. For most, the coast was synonymous with the kind of happiness only experienced during those carefree afternoons of summer that seem to stretch to the point of appearing never-ending, but for Chloe, this area brought back nothing but a heart-wrenching sadness that saw her locked into silence any time she was forced to be near it.

  ‘You okay?’ Alex asked. Chloe nodded, but her thoughts were gripped by fear for her colleague. No matter what Jake was guilty of, he didn’t deserve whatever might be happening to him now. It didn’t matter what speed Alex was driving: they both knew they were too late.

  Alex turned on to a lane even narrower than the last to reach the spot to which they had been directed, wondering whether this was another piece of land that had been brought to Wyatt’s attention via his work.

  They had no confirmation of which of the two men had been harmed, but in her gut Alex feared the worst.

  ‘There’s the van.’

  As they emerged from the darkness of overhanging trees and high, thick hedgerow, Chloe pointed to the near distance. They had entered a wide expanse of field that might have been used as a car park during the day but that now, nearing midnight, was desolate and eerily quiet. The headlights of Alex’s car lit up the white van, which had its back doors flung open. Cutting the engine but leaving the beams to light the stretch of ground before them, Alex got out tentatively and scanned the area for any sign of Wyatt.

  Chloe climbed out of the passenger side and went to the van. She didn’t want to see what was waiting there for her; in her heart, she already knew t
hat Jake was dead. She found him in the back, his body slumped on an old rug and his blood spread out in a dark circle beneath his head. She placed a hand to her mouth, forcing back a surge of sickness. She had seen plenty of bodies before, but she had never seen someone she had known like this.

  And then there was the smell. Even with the doors open and the night air flooding the van, the stench was unmistakable. Covering her mouth and nose with the top of her arm, Chloe carefully stepped into the van and crouched beside Jake, placing her fingers gently on his neck as she checked for a pulse. There was nothing. He was gone. She drew back her hand and swallowed down the sadness she felt rising in her throat. Whatever Jake had been guilty of, he hadn’t deserved for his life to end so cruelly, so prematurely.

  She turned to speak to Alex, but she wasn’t there. The headlights of the car illuminated the inside of the van, lighting its chilling contents. There was a pile of blankets in the corner from which the stench was flooding. With tentative fingers, Chloe pulled back a corner, recoiling at the sight that awaited her. Though his features were grey and bloated with the early effects of decay, she recognised the face that had looked down at them from the evidence board that past week: their missing boy, Matthew Lewis. With horror, she realised that he was not alone. Behind him, curved into the corner of the van, lay the body of Kieran Robinson.

  In the darkness outside, Alex stumbled closer to the cliff edge, losing her footing a couple of times on the uneven ground. The sea stretched out into the distance, vast and blue-black, its sounds swept along with the rush of wind that sped past her. Scanning the drop before her, Alex spotted Michael Wyatt sitting on the grass, his gun on the ground beside him.

  Backup was on its way, but she couldn’t rely on it to get there soon enough. Wyatt knew it was over and that it had only been a matter of time before his crimes caught up with him. She supposed his acceptance of this was the reason he had sent that photo, that finger, as though he had realised his mistakes and had known that time was against him. If he was here to end his own life, she had to stop him. She wanted to know why he had done what he had. She wanted him to face justice for his crimes.