First Blood: A completely gripping mystery thriller (A Detective Kim Stone Novel)

by Angela Marsons

‘Of course. It’s understandable that you’d want to talk to someone, confide in and maybe just enjoy being around.’

  ‘Exactly that,’ Wendy said, nodding her agreement.

  Kim had no idea how intimate the relationship had been and she didn’t care. She had only one question left to ask.

  ‘Which one was it, Curt or Carl?’

  And she wasn’t surprised at the answer.

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  It was almost seven when they were allowed access through the gate back into the shelter.

  They had spoken little during the journey as they had both considered the ramifications of Wendy’s friendship with Carl.

  The ringing of her phone appeared to startle them both.

  Her stomach turned when she saw that it was Keats. Surely not another.

  ‘Inspector Stone, I thought you might like to know something curious that happened prior to the post-mortem of Charles Lockwood.’

  Other than the victim coming alive in the back of the pathologist’s vehicle, she couldn’t imagine what had happened since they’d parted.

  ‘Not sure it means anything but as we were lifting him into the body bag a curious item fell to the floor.’

  Kim wondered if the man got a bonus for each time he used the word curious.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was a sixpence, Inspector. Bent slightly but still identifiable, and if you don’t know what…’

  ‘I know what a sixpence is, Keats,’ she said as her face creased into a frown.

  It had been the equivalent of two and a half pence until 1980.

  ‘Okay, Keats, thanks,’ she said, ending the call.

  It was curious indeed. But given what Dawson had uncovered it may be not all that surprising. Perhaps she should have listened more closely to what Dawson had to say. Had she dismissed the theory so quickly because it had come from the least productive member of her team, the one who had given her the most trouble all week or had she genuinely felt there was no substance to the idea? It was a question she would need to ask herself later and she wasn’t sure she was going to like the answer.

  She turned to her colleague. ‘Looks like Dawson might have had something with the nursery rhyme thing after all,’ she said, pressing the call button.

  ‘Oh great, now the guy will be totally insuff—’

  ‘Dawson,’ she said when he answered, cutting off Bryant. ‘I need you to stay on your nursery rhymes. We have a bent sixpence. See if there’s any connection.’

  He answered in the affirmative as Bryant parked next to Carl Wickes’s Transit van.

  Oh yes, after her conversation with Wendy Lockwood she was even more eager to speak to this particular handyman.

  Chapter Ninety

  Dawson replaced the receiver and beamed at his colleague. ‘Looks like I might have been onto something after all.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it had to happen at least…’

  ‘Ooh, not bitter eh, Stacey, cos I might have done something to impress the boss?’

  She ignored him and continued working.

  Yeah, maybe it was his turn to be star pupil.

  He wasted no more time and entered a Google search for sixpence in nursery rhymes.

  His first hit was for ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’.

  He read through the first verse. The original was only one verse long.

  Sing a song of sixpence,

  A bag full of Rye,

  Four and twenty naughty boys,

  Baked in a pye.

  The next version, dated around 1780, had two verses and the boys had been replaced by birds.

  As he read on to find any darker meaning behind the rhyme, he learned there had been a version with four verses and included a magpie attacking an unfortunate maid. Other versions with happier endings began to appear from the middle of the nineteenth century.

  He read through the many interpretations including the sixteenth century amusement of placing live birds in a pie.

  Others had interpreted the rhyme as a tie to a variety of historical events or folklorish symbols. Or the blackbirds as an allusion to monks.

  There was nothing he read that would indicate any reason for tying this victim to this particular nursery rhyme.

  He returned his attention to the earliest version, looking to hang his hat on something to tell the boss to prove he’d been right.

  He wondered about the four and twenty naughty boys. Could the killer be calling Lockwood a naughty boy?

  His hand hovered over the phone, eager to call the boss and tell her he’d found a link that proved him right. But his hand wouldn’t quite reach for the phone.

  So far, their killer had been detailed on the darker meanings of the rhyme and not the actual lyrics.

  His gut instinct and enthusiasm were not meeting up, but something in him so desperately wanted to make that link and prove himself right.

  But this wasn’t the link and he knew it.

  He moved his hand away from the phone while he took another look.

  Chapter Ninety-One

  ‘You ever go home, Jay?’ Kim asked as the security guard let them into the building.

  ‘Hoping to soon when my relief gets here.’

  He nodded towards the camera room. ‘Everything’s quiet in there and all the staff are out, except for Carl who is on his way through to see you now.’

  Kim looked to Marianne’s locked office.

  ‘I can’t let you into there, I’m sorry, but Jerome’s here now. You can use the security office and I’ll brief him outside, if you like.’

  Kim smiled her thanks at the man who was looking a little worn after his twelve-hour shift.

  ‘Aah, just the man,’ she said as Carl entered the hallway, carrying his tool bag. Clearly, he was not going to waste time once they’d finished.

  Unlike his brother he offered a smile that didn’t seem to sit easy on his face.

  As they all took a seat, Kim studied him briefly, looking for the slight differences between the two brothers, but other than a slightly shorter haircut she could see none.

  ‘Thank you for hanging on to see us,’ she offered. ‘And I’m sure by now you know it’s in connection with Hayley Smart?’

  He nodded and drew his open legs together.

  ‘How well did you know her?’ she asked.

  ‘Not very. We don’t talk too much to the residents. Marianne don’t like it.’

  And yet she already knew that this twin spoke more to the residents than his brother. Especially the attractive ones.

  ‘But surely you had conversations with Hayley. She was here for six months.’

  He shrugged. ‘Now and again. I’d ask her how the little one was. The kid didn’t talk too much.’

  Kim nodded as he again changed his seating position. It was clear she was now talking to the fidgety twin.

  ‘Are there no residents you’ve struck up particular friendships with? I saw you just earlier, while you were changing a plug talking to a woman.’

  ‘Well we can’t very well ignore them,’ he said. ‘We just keep it pleasant and professional.’

  If she remembered correctly he’d kept it pleasant and professional for more than twenty minutes.

  ‘Didn’t you react on Hayley’s behalf when Luke Fenton tracked her down and came here making a nuisance of himself?’

  He shrugged. ‘He was gone by the time I got out there. Never saw the bloke.’

  There was something tapping away at her subconscious. An alarm bell that all was not as it should be.

  She ploughed on.

  ‘Do you remember a woman called Wendy Lockwood?’

  He looked up and to the left as his legs fell open. There was no obvious recognition of the friendship they’d built according to Wendy.

  ‘I think so. Two little girls, married to that reporter bloke?’

  Kim nodded, watching him more closely as a nagging suspicion popped into her head.

  ‘Well, that reporter bloke was found murdered j
ust a couple of hours ago.’

  Genuine surprise shaped his features. That’s what she’d wanted to test. He appeared to be sincerely shocked at the news.

  And if the suspicion and anger growing alongside each other in her stomach were to be believed he would be surprised by the news of his death.

  ‘So, you didn’t really talk to Wendy Lockwood much?’

  He shrugged and shook his head.

  ‘Like I said, we’re not…’

  ‘Yeah, you did say. But that girl earlier, with the fresh perm, what’s her story?’

  His face looked blank.

  ‘I don’t really know much…’

  ‘What about her name. You know that at least, don’t you?’

  Bryant’s head turned at the change in her tone. But she wasn’t a fool and she didn’t appreciate being treated like one.

  She sat back and connected the dots, as she glanced down at his shoulders.

  Tiny flecks of blonde hair. The fidgeting and body movement. The fact he didn’t know who he’d been talking to earlier. But the clincher was his total detachment from the mention of Wendy Lockwood. A woman he’d been known to at least have had a friendship with.

  She folded her arms.

  ‘Nice to talk to you for the second time in one day, Curt, but I asked to speak to Carl; now where the hell is your brother?’

  Chapter Ninety-Two

  I drive away from the shelter undetected with a smile on my face. There are people trying to stop me and I don’t understand why. But I’m away now and they’ll never find me in time.

  I know they’ve found the body of my last offering; the obese, despicable specimen that was Charles Lockwood.

  The man was bent, dishonest, crooked. He told lies to the public to line his own pockets and that wasn’t even the worst of it. Wendy told me all about it. She told me how he’d been abusing poor Sasha right under her nose. Luckily I believed her or she would have been added to the list. Her voice, the slight trembling of the hand, the heavenward gaze as she’d whispered, ‘God forgive me’. She hadn’t known what the bastard was doing to his own daughter. I will leave her to live with that guilt.

  Killing Lockwood revitalised me, enthused me after the disappointment of Hayley. The man showed himself to still be the vacuous, dishonest bastard I thought he was.

  ‘Take everything I have,’ he offered, once he realised I was a threat. He struggled to force himself out of the armchair not knowing he would never stand again.

  I told him I didn’t want his possessions, pitiful as they were. There was only one thing I wanted from him, and once I explained why I was in his house the fear came. He wanted to continue his woeful existence with no friends or family. He was frightened that he was going to die. His eyes shone with it and I felt myself restored like a car spluttering into a petrol station on fumes alone.

  Surely these people looking for me understand that Lockwood had to die after what he’d done?

  I smile wider as I wonder if they’ve found my clue. Do they understand that there is no innocence in the world, that something as simple as a nursery rhyme hides evil and darkness? I learned that many years ago.

  No matter, they’ll never know where I’m going next. A simple conversation today and my next victim has been presented to me. A few google searches, ten minutes’ research and I have a plan. I yearn for the fear and after the satisfaction of Lockwood I need to feel it again soon. I am like a vampire after it has fed for the first time.

  I understand that cravings increase the more they are satisfied. The longing is a by-product of addiction, and the power of the life of abusers resting in my hands offers me a heady euphoria that hurts no one.

  Another abuser will die tonight and there is only one thing left to do.

  It is time to go buy an apple.

  Chapter Ninety-Three

  ‘Anything on the phone records, Stace?’ Kim asked, realising she’d shortened the officer’s name.

  ‘Working on it and hope to have something for you soon.’

  ‘Okay, urgently I need a home address for Carl Wickes of Wickes Repairs. Maybe try Companies House to see where the business is…’

  ‘Yeah, boss, I’ll get it, and Dawson wants a quick word.’

  ‘Put him on,’ she instructed.

  ‘Boss, I think I’ve got the rhyme.’

  ‘Go on,’ she said, expecting to hear about singing a song and blackbirds.

  ‘Did you say the sixpence was damaged?’ he asked.

  ‘Keats said bent.’

  ‘Okay, it’s definitely linked to “There was a Crooked Man”.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Listen it goes like this: “There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat that caught a crooked mouse and they all lived together in their little crooked house.”’

  ‘Err… I’m not sure…’

  ‘Boss, so far our killer has linked the murders to the darker meanings behind the nursery rhymes. This one isn’t about an old man with a cat and a house. It’s rumoured to be about General Sir Alexander Leslie and is from seventeenth-century history; Leslie was known for his lack of loyalty and dishonesty. It’s that kind of crooked.’

  Kim saw his point. ‘In reference to Lockwood’s dishonesty in taking backhanders?’

  ‘I’m thinking so, boss,’ he agreed.

  She could hear the excitement in his voice.

  ‘Oh, Stacey wants you back,’ he said, and she could hear the dip in his voice.

  Too late she realised she should have forced the words out. She had allowed her feelings about his earlier performance in the week to colour her view.

  ‘Boss, I’ve got an address,’ Stacey said.

  ‘Text, it to me,’ she said, thinking only of finding Carl Wickes.

  Dawson would just have to wait.

  Chapter Ninety-Four

  There was no van parked in the street of Carl Wickes’s address in Tipton.

  The flat was on the ground floor of a large house converted into four separate dwellings and from what she could see the only window visible to them had the curtains drawn.

  ‘But what the hell did he have to gain?’ Bryant asked, as they approached the front door.

  ‘We’ll be sure to ask him once we find him,’ she said.

  When asked to explain the attempt at subterfuge, Curt had explained that Carl had a hot date and needed to get away. He explained they’d done it loads of times in the past. When asked if any of those occasions had involved talking to police officers working a murder investigation he seemed to finally grasp the gravity of the situation.

  Curt had tried to get his brother on the phone but it had gone straight to voicemail.

  Neither she nor Bryant believed the hot date story. She believed the man was on a mission.

  ‘I think that our killer was abused himself. Perhaps his abuser read nursery rhymes to him before inflicting the abuse. He experienced something that should have been so innocent followed by absolute horror. That’s why he’s acting out the darker meanings to the nursery rhymes because that’s his association. The darkness.’

  ‘Makes sense,’ he agreed. ‘So, you think the twins were sexually abused as young boys?’

  She nodded. ‘I think one of them was. Louella was clear that Marianne collects lost souls who have suffered just as she did.’

  ‘But how does that help us? Cos I don’t think he’s here, guv,’ Bryant said, as they approached the front door. He covered his mouth to stifle a yawn.

  She checked her watch. So far it had been a thirteen-hour shift.

  Sometimes, she had a tendency to forget the limitations and commitments of her fellow team members, especially when she felt they were on to something.

  ‘Let’s just confirm he’s not here and then we’d best call it a night and start fresh in the morning.’

  Bryant knocked on the door and they waited.

  He knocked again.

  Not
hing.

  Kim leaned down and tried to look through the letter box. The brushes located on the other side obscured her view. But she could hear the eerie sound of empty silence beyond the door.

  She suspected Bryant was right and the man was not at home.

  ‘Just try his phone again,’ she said, wondering if he’d turned it back on and if it would sound beyond the door.

  She couldn’t rid herself of the vision of him hiding in the wardrobe.

  Bryant did as she asked and shook his head. ‘Straight to voicemail.’

  She pushed at the door.

  ‘You know, Bryant, I reckon between us we could have this down in…’

  ‘Guv, you might not value your job but I’ve still got a few years left on my mortgage.’

  ‘I’d say it was an accident.’

  ‘What? We leaned against it and it fell open?’ He shook his head. ‘We’ve got no grounds to enter. We don’t believe anyone is in danger and…’

  ‘Okay, teacher’s pet. I get your point, but with as many murders in as many…’

  She stopped speaking as a sudden thought occurred to her.

  ‘Bryant, did Keats say he thought Lockwood had been murdered on Wednesday?’

  ‘Yep,’ he said, following her back to the car.

  The relief on his face that they were leaving was evident. But if she was right in what she was thinking, there was no way Carl Wickes was at home.

  ‘Bryant, by my calculations we’ve had one victim every day this week. Fenton on Monday, Hayley Smart on Tuesday, Lockwood on Wednesday. We don’t know exactly when Lester Jackson was murdered but it looks like our killer is on a roll.’

  She turned an apologetic smile on him. ‘Looks like the shift isn’t quite over yet.’

  The inner groan was written all over his face.

  But no one was going home yet.

  If the killer remained true to form there was going to be another murder this very night.