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

by Angela Marsons

  Kim found herself hoping the blow had been to the head. She knew the head could bleed profusely from even a minor cut. Many tiny arteries and veins serve the individual muscles and skin on the head and some wounds aren’t life threatening.

  She stepped through the double doors shining the torch down on the ground, hoping to follow a blood trail right to the crime scene.

  ‘Damn it,’ she said, out loud. There was no trail. If the killer had brought the doctor this way he’d realised that the wound was leading anyone straight to them.

  She shone the torch around the corridor which appeared to be more like a tunnel curving out of sight. She remembered that the shape and layout of the medical wing had reminded her of a donut. Plastic chairs still lined the walls waiting for customers to attend consultation appointments. Medical warning posters still hung from noticeboards that dotted the wall between doorways.

  She shone the light on the direction board to her left.

  Arrows pointed to consultation rooms for non-surgical procedures including Botox, fillers, permanent make-up, chemical peels and microdermabrasion, which sounded far too painful not to require a general anaesthetic.

  Another arrow pointed to surgical procedures which seemed to include every part of the body with a name.

  Where the hell would he have taken his victim? she wondered looking over the rooms and procedures again, and how could she move silently along this corridor with enough speed to save the doctor’s life?

  She had the sudden feeling she was running out of time. She was moving stealthily to avoid being detected but by her reckoning there were more than thirty rooms to be checked.

  She paused before moving too much further along the corridor. Her current and pressing objective was to save the life of Doctor Lambert. Catching the killer came in a close second.

  She looked back towards the double doors and realised that she was doing this all wrong.

  Chapter One Hundred Eight

  Kim threw open the double doors to the reception with a different plan in her mind.

  If her prime objective was to save the doctor’s life, then what she needed was a distraction. She needed to make her presence known and hope that the killer thought the preservation of his own life was more important to him than killing this one man.

  It was a gamble she had to take. Running in and out of rooms until she found them would most likely sign Doctor Lambert’s death warrant.

  She smashed the end of Bryant’s torch against the lock holding the metal doors of the incident cupboard together.

  It took two more attempts for the flimsy lock to break open.

  She shone the torch into the space and smiled. Amongst the safety chair, fold-up stretchers, emergency kit and first aid box she found exactly what she was looking for.

  Perfect.

  Before she reached into the cupboard she took out her phone and called her colleague.

  ‘Bryant, they’re over here somewhere,’ she called out.

  ‘Shhh…’ he replied, whispering on her behalf. ‘He’ll hear you.’

  ‘Yeah, there’s been a change of plan. Just get back over here as quick as you can,’ she said, ending the call.

  She stepped back through the double doors into the curving tunnel corridor. She listened keenly first but heard no sound.

  She lifted the loudhailer to her mouth and switched it on.

  ‘This is DI Stone and the place is now surrounded. Come out with your arms in the air.’

  No sound and she hadn’t expected any. This man was not going to give himself up easily.

  She raised the loudhailer again.

  ‘Okay, fella, get running cos I’m coming to get you.’

  Chapter One Hundred Nine

  Kim began moving along the corridor opening doors and shining the torch inside. Contained within each space were the remnants of the business it had been. A desk here, a chair there, boxes of gloves, syringes.

  Even if her plan had worked this was taking too long. If the killer had left the area, Doctor Lambert could still be bleeding to death.

  Think, think, she told herself. Where would the killer want to make his point? Where was the most important area of the building?

  The operating theatre.

  She recalled the information board and remembered it was halfway around the other side.

  She dropped the loudhailer as something scurried up ahead. She put it out of her mind and began to sprint, shining the light at the ground and then up towards the signage.

  She was only twenty feet away from the theatre when she heard a sound. She slowed and tried to drown out the sound of her own breathing. She took a second outside the door. Took a deep breath and threw the doors open.

  There was a small ante-room that led into the operating theatre. Two steps in she could see a writhing form on the ground.

  She rushed forward and shone the torch down. Doctor Lambert’s eyes were wide with fear and pain. The groans of agony were being held back by a gag that indented the flesh of his cheeks. A trail of blood was seeping from beneath his head but that wasn’t the reason for his pain.

  His trousers and underwear had been pulled down to his ankles and blood from his genitals oozed over his thighs.

  She reached down and eased the gag from his mouth. A loud groan escaped.

  ‘Police,’ she said. ‘You’re safe now. Did you see which way he went?’

  Doctor Lambert shook his head and groaned again as his head rolled from side to side.

  Kim reached underneath him and untied his hands. They immediately came around to his genitals.

  He cried out. ‘What the?…’

  ‘Try not to move too much, help is on the way.’

  She heard a sound in the corridor as the man’s eyes rolled back in his head. She shone the torch and her colleague walked into its beam.

  ‘Bryant, stay with the doctor,’ she said, glancing down at his central region. ‘And help him to apply pressure.’

  Bryant didn’t flinch as he knelt beside the man.

  ‘What are you going to do, guv?’ Bryant asked, using his palms to bear down on the doctor’s genitals.

  ‘I’m going to find our killer.’

  Chapter One Hundred Ten

  Kim stepped outside of the operating theatre and wedged the door open. Once emergency services arrived they’d be able to hear the doctor’s cries and be guided quicker to offer assistance.

  She turned right and headed around the corridor in a clockwise direction. It made sense to her that if she’d scared him off he would have headed away from where she was making the noise with the loudhailer.

  She threw open every door as she went, shining in the torch and listening for just a second before moving on. She found herself back at the double doors leading to the reception. Would he have made a dash for his car not believing her bluff of them being surrounded? And if she went out to check would he somehow give her the slip?

  She sprinted outside but the car was exactly where he’d left it.

  She took a second to look around. Nothing had been disturbed. If he had disbelieved her he would have been out and gone by now. He had only needed to be ten feet ahead of her in the winding corridor and she’d been slowed tending to Doctor Lambert.

  She was now sure he had not ventured outside, which meant he was still in the building somewhere.

  She re-entered the clinic with no choice but to retrace her steps. She headed back through the double doors for the third time and instantly felt a frisson of fear. There was something not right here. She should have found him hiding in one of the rooms.

  And she couldn’t hear the doctor groaning.

  Why the hell hadn’t Carl Wickes gone back to his car and left while he had the chance? He could have…

  Her thoughts slowed down as she pondered another question that came to mind after seeing the car out front again.

  Yes, she’d seen the car parked at the shelter the times she’d been there. But she’d seen it at the same ti
me as the two vans. It would have been physically impossible for the handyman to drive two bloody vehicles to work.

  But if it wasn’t Carl Wickes carrying out the murders, who the hell was it?

  All the events of the week began tumbling around in her head and some were bouncing around louder than others. She had fixed her attention on one man because of his behaviour towards the women at the shelter. Her suspicion had increased when he had used his brother to avoid answering her questions. But what questions had he been afraid to answer?

  Another common denominator at the shelter and beyond suddenly came into her mind.

  Damn it, how the hell could she have been so stupid? she asked herself as she reached the doors of the operating theatre.

  They were closed.

  She had left them open.

  As she stormed back into the theatre her torchlight illuminated the figure of the man she was now expecting to see.

  And he was holding a knife to her colleague’s throat.

  Chapter One Hundred Eleven

  ‘Move the knife away from his throat, Nigel,’ she said to the shelter’s hair stylist.

  He didn’t move a muscle as he stared back into the torchlight. Bryant was on his knees with a blade poised at the left-hand side of his neck. Doctor Lambert groaned behind them; much quieter than when she’d left the room a few minutes earlier. Without Bryant applying pressure to the wound the man was losing too much blood. He was dying right before her eyes.

  She guessed that Nigel had remained ahead of her during the chase with the sole intention of coming back to finish the job. Killing the doctor was more important than trying to get away while he had the chance. That single fact made him dangerous and capable of anything to achieve his goal.

  How the hell had she not seen sooner that Nigel was behind the murders?

  Because of his charity work he visited other shelters and cut hair for free, especially around the festive period. The season of goodwill, of giving back.

  Her brain quickly worked through the murders on the board. All of them.

  He knew of Marianne’s story, as did everyone at the shelter. He’d witnessed Hayley’s story for himself. He knew that Luke Fenton had sexually abused little Mia and that Hayley had gone back to him and viewed her equally as guilty as the man himself. He’d spent time at the shelter with Wendy Lockwood and he’d styled Diana Lambert’s hair earlier that day for her meeting with Child Services. Right before the woman had been seen chatting to Carl Wickes.

  She remembered his reaction to the children in the pop-up salon. She recalled now they’d been singing ‘Ring a Ring of Roses’. He’d turned up the radio to drown out the nursery rhyme.

  She tried not to let the fear show in her expression as she faced him, but she had to get that blade away from her colleague’s throat. Less than a second and he would be dead. She had no weapon. She was twelve feet away from them both. This was a man who wanted to kill and didn’t care much for the consequences.

  She briefly considered throwing the torch at him as a distraction so that Bryant could scramble away, but just the raising of her arm could prompt him to do something drastic in response. It would take less than a second.

  Think, think, think, she told herself. By her reckoning help was just a minute or two away but any sudden activity could cause him to pull that blade across Bryant’s neck. Whatever she did she had to remain perfectly still.

  She had an idea and just prayed that Bryant would understand.

  ‘People talk, don’t they, Nigel, while they’re having their hair done? Did Butcher Bill tell you all about Tommy Deeley’s past?’ she asked, quietly.

  Hell, the homeless guy who had confessed had pretty much told her who the murderer was on the interview tape.

  Snip. Snip.

  No response from Nigel as he continued to stare right at her.

  ‘You were leaving the refuge when Hayley turned up seeking help from Marianne, weren’t you? Hayley liked you, trusted you. You bought her food while you made your plan because you were surprised by her presence at the shelter. She was a gift to you. Just placed right there when you weren’t expecting it. And then you took her and murdered her.’

  No response.

  ‘John Doe, six years ago. That was your abuser, wasn’t it?’

  A slight tremble to the hand. Bryant’s eyes widened but he kept perfectly still.

  ‘Who was it, Nigel?’ she asked.

  ‘My father,’ he said, quietly. The voice was gentle, pained and not what she’d expected.

  His suffering found a spot inside her but she pushed it aside. Six people were dead because of this man and two more could be added to that list if she didn’t tread carefully.

  ‘He would read nursery rhymes to you, before—’

  ‘Every night,’ he said.

  ‘The words were innocent little rhymes but you knew what was coming after…’

  ‘There is nothing innocent about nursery rhymes. They are dark and evil like sexual abusers. Everyone I’ve killed deserved to die. They all inflicted pain and fear on victims who couldn’t fight back because they were too little, but the little people grow up, you see, and turn into people like me.’

  ‘Not all abused children go on to commit murder,’ she said, trying to plant the word in his mind.

  ‘You think that’s what I did?’ he asked, genuinely surprised. ‘You think I murdered people?’

  ‘Didn’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘I provided a service. I didn’t go looking for these people. They were presented to me. Everywhere I went. What choice did I have? I couldn’t ignore the obvious signs. None of them are innocent, you see. Many of them pretended to be good fathers and—’

  ‘You see that guy kneeling in front of you,’ she said, to bring his attention back to the people in the room. The details they could discuss further in the police station interview room. ‘He’s a father, but he’s a good father. He has a teenage daughter who is loved and protected. He’s a hard-working man with integrity and passion for his family. He’s innocent, Nigel. He has hurt no one.’

  He considered her words and then nodded slowly. ‘But while I have this knife to his throat you won’t come near me and the man behind me will die. That’s all I want. It’s not murder. I’ve committed no crime. I’ve helped people to heal knowing that these monsters are gone. That little girl will sleep easier knowing he’s never going to get the chance to hurt anyone again.’

  She paused before speaking. ‘The problem is, Nigel, that the man behind you is innocent. You only have to look at him to know I’m telling the truth. He didn’t abuse his daughter. Diana Lambert made it up. It was a vindictive lie to cover his accusations of her own drug addiction. His daughter has not been harmed.’

  For the first time he appeared unsure of himself.

  ‘It’s true, and if you look at him I think you’ll see that the man is innocent,’ she said, offering Bryant his second cue.

  ‘No, he can’t be. She said that’s why she was at the shelter. You’re lying.’

  ‘It’s the truth, Nigel. You’ve looked into the eyes of the guilty. You know the fear that lives there. You’ve seen the evil in their eyes but killing this man is murder, even in your own eyes it’s a crime.’

  ‘No, I don’t believe—’

  ‘Nigel, you know these people. You’ve seen it up close. Now take a look and…’

  ‘You’re wrong. You’re—’

  ‘Take a look, Nigel,’ she repeated.

  He began to turn his head and that was all Bryant needed.

  With Nigel’s focus on something other than the blade, Bryant reared his head backwards away from the knife.

  Nigel stumbled.

  Bryant didn’t take the time to get off his knees. He turned, grabbed Nigel’s legs and pulled him to the ground.

  Kim closed the space between them in a second and took the knife from Nigel’s hand at the exact second she heard footsteps in the corridor.

  ‘In here,’ she c
alled out as she rolled the man on to his front and sat astride the small of his back.

  Bryant moved around Nigel to get back to Doctor Lambert.

  ‘Is he okay?’ she asked, tightening her thighs around the man beneath her to keep him in place.

  ‘Still breathing,’ he said, placing his hands back at the man’s crotch.

  Suddenly the room burst into light as uniformed officers stormed into the space.

  Confusion reigned on all the faces at the sight that met them.

  ‘Get the paramedics to the doctor over there and then I need you guys to do me one more favour.’

  ‘Yes, Marm,’ said the one at the front.

  ‘Give Wolverhampton station a call and tell them we got their man.’

  Chapter One Hundred Twelve

  Stacey stepped into her flat at 1.30 a.m. after an eighteen-hour shift.

  After finding the blood smeared over Doctor Lambert’s car she and Dawson had headed straight to the medical centre, arriving just as Bryant was insisting he needed no help from a concerned paramedic. The boss had told them both to go home, but neither Stacey nor Dawson had wanted to leave until they’d been de-briefed.

  The meeting had been short, just long enough only for the boss to neck a strong coffee, but it had been intense, as they’d recounted the events of the night. Her mouth had opened, closed and opened again as though she was watching some kind of action film. She’d started the week attending a crime scene that had almost made her throw up and had finished it by learning that one of her new colleagues had been held at knifepoint. Oh yeah, her first week had sure been a baptism of fire.

  She threw down her satchel and fell back into the sofa, unsure if she would even make it as far as the bedroom tonight, but they’d been told to take tomorrow off, today now, and she wanted a moment to reflect.

  She found it hard to believe that they had been working this case for only four days. Not four shifts as she knew them. They’d exceeded that by a long shot. But only four days in real hours and in that time she had learned a lot.