Dark Order : A Harrison Lane Mystery (The Dr Harrison Lane Mysteries Book 3)

by Gwyn GB

  ‘Excellent,’ said John, a huge smile breaking the frown which had been rooted on his features all day. ‘Now we have a good reason to keep Joseph here. Separate him from the others and see if we can weaken his influence. They might speak out if he’s not such a threat. Go and tell him the good news David and let’s see if we can get anything else on him for this warrant.’

  21

  Harrison still had one loose end to tie up. Someone who could throw more light on what had gone on and help determine who had been responsible for George’s death. The ghost monk.

  She didn’t sound too keen on the phone, but Annabelle Keyes agreed to see him and he left the incident room for her University accommodation off Owens Gate.

  On his way, Harrison thought about how he should approach their conversation. It was still a possibility that she had murdered George in a revenge killing. It was a poisoning and not a violent crime, but the other injuries to him, especially the triangular piece of skin that had been cut and the symbols on his torso, all pointed to a sadistic killer. From what he’d seen, that certainly didn’t describe Annabelle. He’d contemplated telling David or John where he was going and getting one of them to come with him, but he knew that would terrify her. If he had any hope of getting to the truth of what had gone on the night Christopher died, then this needed to be an unofficial chat first, before he asked her to go on the record.

  Annabelle looked decidedly unsure as she opened the door to Harrison. If he’d thought she looked nervous at the police station, the anxiety had ramped up to full throttle. Her neck was red and her hands shook slightly as she showed him into her room.

  He tried to put her at ease, but they both knew the conversation wasn’t going to be an easy one.

  Annabelle offered him the only chair and sat herself on her bed. It was a neat room, small and packed with her personality. On the walls were photographs of her and Christopher, laughing, holding hands, pulling silly faces as selfies. Plus, there were a couple of her in her gymnastic heyday, a particularly good image of her somersaulting off a horse, and another of her receiving a very large cup. On her desk was a family photograph. Annabelle and her parents, with what Harrison assumed to be her younger sister and their dog, a big yellow Labrador whose tongue took up half the photograph.

  ‘Have you stopped the gymnastics?’ Harrison asked, nodding at the two photographs.

  Annabelle looked over at them.

  ‘Yeah, pretty much. I’m too old now really and you’ve got to practice so much to keep on top of your fitness that it’s just not practical to carry on here.’

  ‘You’re still fit and agile, though,’ Harrison looked at her now.

  It was clear Annabelle wasn’t stupid. She immediately knew the hidden meaning behind that statement, and she looked away, biting her bottom lip.

  ‘You see that map,’ she nodded at a printout of the map of the world with dozens of tiny crosses on it. ‘Chris and I were planning to travel after uni. We had it all worked out.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see his killer brought to justice?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Then why don’t you talk to us?’

  ‘Things aren’t straightforward.’

  ‘I need to know a couple of crucial pieces of information which could ensure Joseph Goode doesn’t get away.’

  Annabelle had looked up, shocked when he said Joseph’s name.

  ‘Was he the ring leader responsible for Christopher’s death, even if he wasn’t entirely to blame?’

  ‘I can’t…’ Annabelle’s face showed the enormous emotional struggle she was trying to wrestle.

  ‘I’m not here to take an official statement. For now, this is an informal chat. I’m a psychologist, not a detective. This is between you and me.’

  Harrison let that sink in for a few moments. He could tell she was struggling with the urge to speak out, but something was holding her back. He tried to goad it out of her.

  ‘What about George? Did you kill George because of what he did to Christopher?’

  Annabelle looked up, shocked.

  ‘No. No way, I couldn’t kill anyone. George was struggling with it all. Found it difficult to keep up the lies. He came to me, all repentant and crying, about two weeks before he died. It was crocodile tears. He was just scared of being caught. Wanted to blame it all on Joseph, but he was frightened of him, too. They all are. I asked him to leave. He didn’t really care about Christopher.’

  ‘Joseph is currently at the police station being questioned. I’d like to ensure he stays there.’

  Annabelle looked up again and searched Harrison’s face. She gave the tiniest of nods. He took that as a tentative yes to proceed.

  ‘How did you know where they’d buried him?’

  She looked down again. Her chin creased, and her bottom lip trembled.

  Harrison waited.

  ‘I was there.’

  He instantly had questions he wanted to ask, but he held back. Let her tell her story in her own time.

  ‘I went with him that night to the selection dinner in Moatside. He was so excited. I don’t drink much, never have because it just wasn’t an option with the gymnastics. They plied us with alcohol, told me I was drinking fruit juice, but it wasn’t. There were only a couple of other girls there, and they did the same to them. They egged Christopher on to drink more and more. Made it into some kind of macho competition. He really wanted to be a part of the group. It was supposed to be so prestigious. Mark Lloyd-Jones had sold it to him. Said they were going to have influence in all the highest places. They were building a network which would help each other out, and the rest of the time they would enjoy the best things in life. It was only for the chosen few. Christopher had been chosen, and he wanted to prove himself.’

  Annabelle stopped for a moment, and a shiver ran through her body. She looked young and fragile on the bed.

  ‘Then Joseph said that he had to undergo an initiation and so did I if I was to be the girlfriend of a Moatside Monk. They separated us. Put me in another room, but I was comatose by then. I lay down on a bed and that was it, just passed out. I’m not sure if it was just alcohol, or if there had also been drugs in my drink, because the next thing I remembered was Joseph leering over me. Somehow I was naked, and he was doing things to me, using objects on me and posing me.’

  Annabelle’s voice broke into a hoarse whisper, the shame and embarrassment written across her face.

  ‘I know what he’d been doing because he showed me photographs. I tried to fight him off, but he’d gagged me and tied my arms and legs so I couldn’t kick out or push him away. I was out of it. Everything kept going black. There was no strength in me. I passed out again. I’m not sure how long for. I’m guessing it was half an hour, or an hour. I’d completely lost track of time by then.’ Annabelle let out a shuddering sigh.

  ‘When I woke up, there was another girl on the bed, too. She was also tied up and half naked, and she was unconscious. I was coming round more then and tried to shake her awake, but I couldn’t. I tried to undo the ties on my wrists and ankles, but Joseph came back into the room. He pulled his trousers off and climbed on top of me and raped me. This time, he had sex with me. When he’d finished, he said that if I ever breathed a word of anything that went on at the dinner, he would share the photographs and videos he’d taken with the world, with my parents, across the University. I would never get a job. My father would be so ashamed. I remember crying and him sitting on top of me, laughing. His face was manic, like a madman. I’d never seen him like that. He seemed to be totally high on what he was doing. Then he said that if I ever felt brave enough to not worry about the shame, he would kill me. He put his hands around my throat and started to squeeze. I couldn’t breathe, I passed out again.’

  Harrison watched the young woman in front of him, reliving the horror of that night. It was taking every ounce of her strength to tell him, but he knew it was just the first tentative step on her road to recovery. He wanted to head str
aight back to the station and confront Joseph. His blood boiled with anger towards him, but he had to stay calm for her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she whispered as she tried to pull herself together, ‘this is the first time I’ve told anybody.’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ Harrison replied gently. ‘Take your time.’

  Annabelle took a few deep breaths.

  ‘When I came round again, all hell had broken loose in the other room. I could hear shouting. They were all arguing. I managed to loosen the ties enough on my ankles to undo them and get up. I couldn’t dress, couldn’t free my hands, but I peered around the door and I saw him, Christopher. I could tell he was dead. He was lying naked in some kind of coffin box. I think they’d been hitting him with sticks because he had bruises all over him, and I could hear them saying they shouldn’t have put him in the box, that something had gone wrong and he’d died.’

  Annabelle stopped again. Gulping for air. Harrison knew she was having a panic attack. For a year she had kept all this pain and horror inside of her and been forced to get on with her life as though nothing had happened. She was stronger and braver than she realised.

  ‘Please take time and let yourself breathe,’ he said to her. ‘Count to ten slowly.’ He waited, monitoring her closely. ‘Breathe in and out. Focus only on your breathing. One, two, three,’ he counted softly.

  Slowly Annabelle’s face regained some colour, and the white of her knuckles turned to pink as she loosened her grip on the duvet. Then she took a deep breath and started talking again.

  ‘Joseph was calm, and just told them all to shut up and said they were going to have to get rid of him. I was hysterical. He saw me and just slapped me hard and told me that if I ever breathed a word, he would kill me. He told the others that too. Said they were all in this together. It was what the brotherhood was for, and the price of being a traitor, was death. It was sick.’

  Annabelle looked into Harrison’s eyes. He felt pity for her, just twenty years old and she’d been exposed to Joseph Goode’s sadism so brutally.

  ‘I didn’t know what to do. I must have been shocked and traumatised. The rape, Christopher. I’m not even sure how I got back here. When I was told that Christopher was missing, I think they all thought that’s why I was upset. I could barely look at his parents. I wanted to speak out, really I did. I even walked to the police station one day, but I was just so scared. What if they didn’t believe me? I knew that all of them had rich families. They’d be able to afford really good lawyers and you hear these stories... My parents aren’t wealthy, and my dad hadn’t been well. I thought the shock and shame might kill him too. As the months went on, I got a bit stronger and then I saw that they were carrying on as though nothing had happened. I had to do something. The only thing I could think of was to draw attention to where he was buried. I couldn’t let Joseph know it was me so I wore a mask and the cloak and hood. I put graffiti up around Moatside Lane to scare them, and hoped that one of the others might get brave enough to challenge Joseph, or at least that someone would eventually connect the Moatside Monks with it.’

  ‘What about George?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about George. I don’t care either. He was there. He took part in what happened. I know it’s wrong, but I don’t care. Maybe Joseph knew he was wavering, and he thought it was him who was causing the trouble.’

  ‘I need to ask you if Joseph cut you at all.’

  ‘Cut me? Yes. Yes he did. On my butt cheek, he sliced a piece of skin off, I’ve got a scar.’

  ‘Triangular?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You might not know this, but did you notice what he did with it?’

  ‘No. Oh God, has he kept it?’

  ‘Possibly, but it would be evidence that could convict him.’

  ‘Oh God.’ She put her head into her hands and rubbed her face. ‘He did it to Christopher, too. I noticed he also had a triangle cut into him. Although he was badly bruised, I could see the raw patch. They got him out of the box and dressed him in the monk’s cloak. That’s when I saw it. Joseph made me watch. I think it was to scare me. Maybe he also knew it upset me. He kept telling the others that he would protect them now, that they were brothers for life. Joseph went out and when he came back, he told them about the rose garden. It had just been dug and planted the day before and the screens around the area were still up, so it was hidden from view. They knew where to get spades from. There’s a place the Castle gardeners used to store their equipment. It all seemed so easy for him and the others just followed whatever he said.’

  Harrison stayed with Annabelle for another half an hour to ensure she was alright on her own. He promised her that they would catch up with Joseph and asked her to promise that she would seek counselling for what had happened to her. It made him feel sick. The abuse she had been put through. Joseph Goode was a sadist in every way, but his need for control and ritual would be his undoing. Right now, Annabelle was too scared to speak out officially against him for fear Joseph would release the images he had of her, but Harrison had another way to prove his guilt.

  22

  Harrison was on his way back when a text came through from Ryan telling him to look at his emails. He did as he was told, and it made him stop in his tracks. After reading just a few sentences, he knew he was looking at the blueprint for a murderer, and most importantly, the means to catch him.

  DI Steadman was trying to get five minutes quiet to eat his sandwich, which he’d been looking forward to all morning. His wife had bought him his favourite pastrami from Waitrose and placed it between an olive ciabatta roll. Heaven. He’d only taken two bites from it when Harrison Lane filled the view from his desk.

  ‘Have we got the search warrant?’

  ‘I would love to be able to tell you that we have Dr Lane, but you’ve seen that army of suits in there. We are facing an uphill battle on that one.’

  ‘My colleague has sent me through a Child Protective Services report from America. I’ve no idea how he came to have hold of it, but it also came with a couple of newspaper cuttings from 2013. I’m guessing they’d been acquired by journalists. What they contain proves that Joseph Goode is our killer, and I know how to prove it.’

  ‘Go on.’ John placed his ciabatta roll back into his lunchbox and closed the lid.

  ‘The report starts when he was just fourteen. Child protective services had been called in after several people had expressed concern about him. They discovered that not only was he an alcoholic, probably been drinking since he was eight years old, but he’d been brought up in an environment where drink, drugs and sex parties were the norm. He also had a string of sex attacks that were linked to him. No one would go on the record. All the complaints got settled before they amounted to anything. You have to remember who his dad was, and although he had a completely dysfunctional relationship with his father, and was immediately taken away and put into the care of his uncle, they still maintained contact.’

  ‘What about the mother?’

  ‘Died of a drugs overdose a few years before. The uncle is her brother. It’s tragic reading, but it’s critical for this enquiry,’ Harrison continued. ‘It gives us some pretty big clues as to the kind of personality Joseph is, and he fits the profile perfectly. He was drinking heavily from an early age. If children and young teenagers drink like that, they can get a form of brain damage. You might not notice if he’s intelligent, but it could affect the frontal lobe which has to do with judgement, decision making and critically, impulse control. It also impacts the amygdala, which deals with emotions like fear and anxiety. It explains why he appears so cool under pressure. Whoever killed Christopher and George is sadistic. They enjoy inflicting pain on other people and having power over them.’

  John was listening intently, not interrupting, and a couple of other detectives had heard the conversation and were also listening in.

  Harrison continued, ‘In the report, Joseph was also said to be showing signs of Satanic influence. There was the
mention of a gang and of cats disappearing from his uncle’s neighbourhood when he moved in. Also that he subjected girls to a barbaric ritual whereby he cut a small triangular-shaped piece of skin from their buttocks. The father paid the girls off. No official complaints were ever made, they said they were consenting. George had a triangular-shaped piece of skin cut from him.’

  ‘You saying he had some kind of sexual relationship with George?’

  ‘No. Although it’s possible. It’s his ritual to show he has power over somebody. In Satanism, a triangle represents a place where a demon has materialised. I think Joseph sees himself as that demon and believes it gives him control over that person for life, a sign that he’d been there and done what he wanted.’

  ‘So it’s some kind of Satanic ritual or a trophy?’

  ‘Probably a bit of both. I’m damned sure he keeps them somewhere. In his warped mind he thinks it maintains that control.’

  ‘Would he be stupid enough to keep it in the house?’

  ‘He thinks he’s untouchable, protected, if you like. There will be somewhere that he hides them, perhaps even in plain sight, but definitely not far from where he is. He will want them near to him. They have to be there.’

  Harrison could see John’s mind working overtime. Most of the officers in the incident room had gradually drifted over to them, and they were now surrounded by the majority of the team.

  ‘We’re going to have to be smart and quick. They’re going to come down on us like a ton of bricks. If I get the warrant, we need to be ready to go in immediately because they’ll attempt to get it withdrawn. There’ll be no time to lose. The families and their lawyers will challenge it the instant they know about it. We will have just minutes to get in there and find that evidence.’