Close to the Bone: An addictive crime thriller with edge-of-your-seat suspense (Detective Megan Thomas)

by Susan Wilkins

  ‘Yeah,’ says Megan, ‘and I’ve been meaning to ring you, but things have been a bit mad.’

  Debbie shrugs. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ she says in a martyred voice. ‘Have you found out who did it yet?’

  This is all starting to grate on Megan’s nerves. She looks at the dog, snug in his corner basket but keeping a beady eye on things. She knows she must keep her temper.

  ‘Things are moving on a bit,’ she says evenly. ‘But no, we haven’t nailed anyone yet.’

  Megan gets up, goes to the sink and pours herself a glass of water. Besides being tired, she realises how dehydrated she is, which probably explains the niggling headache.

  Then she says, ‘When you were cleaning at the flats, I don’t suppose you ever saw Greg with a Spanish woman, about forty, attractive, quite posh.’

  ‘You think Greg was screwing her?’ says Debbie. ‘Sounds a bit out of his league.’

  ‘Maybe. Or perhaps they were connected through some kind of business deal.’

  ‘I never saw a woman,’ says Debbie, ‘but there was a Spanish bloke.’

  ‘A bloke?’ says Megan.

  ‘Yes, big tough-looking bloke, about fifty-odd, with a beard. I’m sure he was Spanish because I heard him talking to the two lads that came with him.’

  ‘When was this?’ says Megan. The CCTV from the harbour office. Three men in the middle of the night: one older, with a beard, two much younger.

  ‘A week or so ago. Greg was furnishing the show flat. Three of them came with a van-load of furniture. Fancy stuff too. I watched them unload it. Must’ve cost Greg a mint.’

  ‘Did you see Greg with them at all?’ asks Megan.

  ‘Yeah, he let them into the show flat and I heard them talking.’

  ‘Talking in English?’ says Megan.

  ‘They were laughing. The big Spanish guy said something like, “Hey, don’t ask me. I just do what she tells me. She’s the boss.”’ Greg Porter knew the smugglers!

  ‘Do you think they were just delivery guys?’

  Debbie shakes her head. ‘No, they seemed more like mates doing him a favour. He helped them carry stuff in. Greg would’ve never helped a delivery guy.’

  ‘Any names?’

  ‘Not that I can remember.’

  The microwave pings. Debbie lifts out the plate of moussaka and puts it on the table for Megan.

  ‘Aww, that smells great,’ says Megan. ‘But hey, don’t bother with salad. This will be fine.’ She wants to eat and she wants to think, to process this new information.

  But Debbie sits down opposite her sister. ‘Meg, I wanted to say… oh, shit, I don’t really know what I want to say. Sorry, I suppose.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Deb,’ says Megan tucking in with her fork.

  ‘Yeah it does,’ says Debbie. ‘I spoke to Mark on the phone earlier. He said he saw you this morning before he left. He thought you looked quite down in the mouth. You have to understand, this whole thing really did my head in. And I hate it when you’re angry with me.’

  Megan puts her fork down. Do they have to do this now? She appears to have no choice.

  ‘I’m not angry with you,’ she says, ‘but I was hurt and upset. That’s different.’

  ‘Feels to me like you’re angry,’ says Debbie. ‘But whatever. What can I do to make it up to you?’

  ‘Two things,’ says Megan. ‘Number one: I want you to admit that you were angry with me. It wasn’t the other way round. You were angry and you lashed out. I got hurt. That’s what actually happened. You can’t always play the little sister card and be the victim.’

  Debbie sighs and looks sheepish. ‘Is that what I’m doing?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Megan. ‘Second thing. I’m going to make you and Mark an interest-free loan to pay off your credit cards.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t possibly accept that,’ says Debbie.

  ‘Yes you can. I got a lump sum from my divorce settlement. It’s just sitting there in the bloody bank earning bugger all interest. You’ve given me a home, somewhere to belong and the chance to put my life back together. Let me do this. Please.’

  Debbie walks round the table and flings her arms around Megan. There are tears in her eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispers.

  ‘And in future talk to me, Deb,’ says, Megan. ‘Doesn’t matter what you’ve done, I’m not going to judge you. Believe me, I’m in no position to judge anyone.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Debbie. Her chin is quivering but she’s smiling. ‘Shall we seal the deal with a glass of wine?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely,’ says Megan. ‘And this moussaka is great.’

  Debbie goes to the fridge and takes out a bottle of white wine. She unscrews the top and pours two glasses.

  They raise their glasses in a toast.

  ‘What shall we drink to?’ says Debbie.

  ‘I dunno,’ says Megan. ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down?’

  They clink glasses and drink. The phone in Megan’s bag buzzes. She picks it up and looks at it. An incoming call from Vish.

  She sighs. ‘I should probably take this.’

  She clicks to answer and says, ‘I thought Sasha Garcia had persuaded you to go for a meal and who knows what.’

  ‘My virtue is intact,’ says Vish. ‘But we just got a call from comms. Uniforms have found Barry Porter’s four-by-four parked up a farm track. There’s a body stuffed in the boot and a lot of blood.’

  ‘Shit,’ says Megan. ‘Who’s duty DI?’

  ‘Collins. But they can’t raise him. Slater told me to call you.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Text me the postcode, I’ll meet you there.’

  She gazes at her half-eaten moussaka and the wine and sighs.

  Forty-Eight

  Monday, 9.44 p.m.

  The blue lights guide Megan for the last quarter of a mile. She glimpses them intermittently through the high hedgerows. The narrow lane rises steeply. Even the edge of the moors at night can be a spooky place. The car clatters over a cattle grid and she has to brake sharply to avoid two Greyface Dartmoor sheep. They stand frozen in the headlights for a second before skipping away.

  As she approaches the farm, a uniformed officer flags her down with his torch. She shows her ID and he points to where she can park. She finds Vish leaning on the open door of his car and talking to the other response officer.

  Megan parks and walks towards them. They’re illuminated by the interior light from his car.

  The PC with Vish is female and upset. She’s blowing her nose on a tissue Vish has just provided.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Don’t mean to be such a wuss.’

  ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘First time is always a shock. You don’t need to apologise.’

  Megan joins them.

  ‘This is DS Thomas,’ says Vish. ‘PC Harrison found the body in the boot.’

  Harrison stands up straight. ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ she says. She looks extremely young, probably a probationer.

  ‘It’s Megan. What’s your first name?’

  ‘Sonia.’

  ‘Okay, Sonia,’ says Megan. ‘I’m guessing it was grim. Talk me through what you did.’

  ‘It’s just that I wasn’t expecting it. The blood and the smell. Comms just told us they’d had a call from the farmer because this vehicle was blocking the track and it’s the only access route in and out of his farm. He was stroppy and threatening to shunt it with his tractor. Oli, my partner, started looking inside and he said check the back and—’

  ‘Keys in it?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Sonia. ‘Key fob was on the dash.’

  ‘So you opened the back?’

  ‘Yeah. At first I didn’t really know… I thought maybe a dog. But the smell…’

  ‘Is it wrapped in anything?’

  ‘No. I think it’s a man. Khaki shorts and sandals. The head’s just all bloody.’

  ‘You’ve done really well, Sonia,’ says Megan. ‘Because I’m going to go and look at it now and I’ll know w
hat to expect. So you’ve done your job. Have you talked to the farmer?’

  ‘Yeah, him and his son came out when we arrived. The farm’s just over the field there.’

  Megan glances in the direction she’s pointing. The shadowy outlines of the building are visible with a few splashes of light.

  ‘Go up to the farmhouse. Don’t give them any details. Just say I’ll be up shortly to speak to them. Okay?’

  Sonia nods, relieved to have something to do. She disappears across the field into the darkness.

  Megan turns to Vish and says, ‘Got any gloves?’

  He pulls some blue vinyls out of his pocket. She puts them on as they walk up the track towards the four-by-four.

  ‘We’re sure this is Porter’s car?’ she says.

  ‘Yeah, they called in the registration when they got here and it came up as his and that he was reported missing.’

  The lane is single track, grass in the middle, and the grey Toyota RAV4 effectively blocks it. The open front doors touch the hedgerows either side. The courtesy light is on, casting a ghostly glow over the interior. Vish switches his torch on. The beam dances over the back of the vehicle. The tailgate is open a few inches. Megan lifts it up.

  The stench of blood and faeces and puke hits, reminding her of every post mortem she’s attended; it’s not a smell you forget. In the luggage compartment behind the back seats, the body lies on its side in the foetal position. The knees are curled up pointing towards them, the arms crossed over the chest. The mouth is open, the tongue lolls and the eyes are open and staring. The entry wound in the middle of the forehead is comparatively small but the whole of the back of the head has been blown off. Still the face is recognisable enough. Barry Porter.

  Megan and Vish stare at the corpse for several moments.

  Then she sighs and says, ‘Looks to me like they put him in the back of the car alive. He curled up, clutching his arms round his torso to protect himself. Then later they opened the back and shot him through the head. Poor old Barry.’

  Vish exhales. ‘Bloody hell, the look on his face – that is scary. No wonder the PC freaked. I’ve not seen a gunshot like that before. It is a gunshot?’

  ‘I’m no expert but I’m guessing it’s a nine millimetre. You can get some nasty types of bullets.’

  Vish glances at her. ‘You seem to know quite a lot about this stuff.’

  Unfortunately he’s right. ‘Whoever did this is a professional criminal,’ she says. ‘Up close, no emotion. It’s an execution.’

  ‘Do you think they’re still around?’

  ‘Highly unlikely. They came here to dump the body. They will have needed a second vehicle. So with any luck there’ll be some tyre tracks and footprints. We’ll need CSI up here pronto. Be careful where you step, we don’t want to contaminate the scene any more than we have already.’

  ‘Phone signal’s crap. We may need to use the landline at the farm,’ says Vish.

  ‘I’ll go and talk to the farmer. You and the other PC get a secure cordon round this. Ten feet in front and behind the vehicle. Then post the PC down the hill there, tell everyone to park up there. Let’s retrace our steps back to the cars exactly the way we came.’

  Vish sighs. ‘Right.’ He swallows hard.

  ‘You all right?’ says Megan. She can’t really see his face.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I don’t get it though. Why would anyone do this to a stupid old fart like Barry Porter?’

  ‘Good question,’ says Megan. ‘He obviously knew some unsavoury people.’

  She sets out across the field towards the farmhouse. The torch on her phone casts a spectral light across the grass.

  Why would anyone do this to Barry Porter? She shouldn’t even be here. But yet again she’s doing Collins’s job.

  Less than a week ago this saga began with the murder of Greg Porter. Debbie discovered the body and thanks to Collins’s stupidity, she ended up in the frame. From there the inquiry veered off into the Porter family when his son Aidan confessed. The boy thought his mother did it. He’d filmed her being beaten up by his father. It looked like Yvonne Porter was an abused wife who finally snapped. But now they’re in vastly different territory. Greg Porter and his father seem unlikely criminals but it appears they were running a front operation for a gang of people smugglers. What puzzles Megan is the shock in Barry Porter’s eyes. It suggests a man who had no idea what was happening or why.

  Forty-Nine

  Tuesday, 10 a.m.

  It was a long night. Megan stayed at the farm until she could hand the crime scene over securely to Hilary Kumar and her team. Megan took a statement from the farmer. But he and his family saw and heard nothing, which was what Megan expected. She went home but couldn’t sleep. Barry Porter’s ghoulish face, frozen in horror at his own fate, haunted her. His death and his son’s might well be connected, but to Megan they seem to be very different sorts of murders: a frenzied attack with a hammer, a pre-meditated execution with a gun.

  The incident room is full to capacity. Chief Superintendent Rob Barker is at the front to lead the morning briefing with Laura Slater at his side. Megan notices Jim Collins tucked away hoping to look inconspicuous. She tries not to feel resentful even though she’s lost a night’s sleep covering for him. He was the DI on call.

  Danny Ingram and Sasha Garcia arrive with Brittney. He catches her eye and gives her the briefest smile. Brittney is joking with them, enjoying her new role as part of the gang. Megan feels a pang of envy.

  ‘Morning, everyone,’ says Barker. ‘And a special welcome to our colleagues from the National Crime Agency, who will be working alongside us on this joint operation. We now have two murders: father and son. And we have a connection with a human trafficking gang known to be operating on our patch. Danny, I know your team’s been busy. Perhaps you could kick off with an update?’

  Ingram edges towards the front. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he says. ‘To start with, our operation was based on intelligence received from European partners that an organised criminal gang was running an upmarket service to smuggle illegal migrants into the UK. Their presence in this area was confirmed last Thursday when we detained an illegal Syrian migrant and her child at Blackpool Sands. After interviewing her we suspected that the boat or boats being used by the smugglers were being hidden in a local marina, in plain sight, so to speak. CCTV from Torquay marina led us to suspect a man in his fifties, two much younger men and a woman. We tracked them through ANPR up onto the moors, where we lost them. Yesterday DS Thomas and DC Prasad pointed us in the direction of two boats owned by a company run by our murder victims. I’ll let my colleague Sasha Garcia pick up the story.’

  Garcia gets up and carries her laptop to the front. She takes her time, no nerves. Seems to love the attention. Megan wonders how you get that kind of confidence. Garcia hands a cable to Kitty, who plugs it into the monitor. Megan’s gaze skips round the room and meets Ingram’s eye. He smiles at her. Is he reading her thoughts? Is she that transparent?

  ‘Hi, everyone,’ says Garcia. ‘We’ve been doing some in-depth analysis into the digital record. There are a lot of expensive boats in the marina and a network of high-end CCTV cameras to protect them and record their comings and goings. The two boats in question disappeared from the marina, probably on Sunday night, and they’ve gone off the grid. There’s a Border Force vessel patrolling in the Channel which is on the lookout for them and the coastguard has been alerted. Problem is they could be tucked away either side of the Channel. A small cove, an estuary? Plenty of places to hide.’

  ‘And all the relevant agencies have been provided with a detailed description?’ asks Barker.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ says Garcia. ‘Turning to the owners. Company data we’ve collected suggests Greg and Barry Porter were the front. But as yet the connection between them and our potential smugglers is hard to prove. This woman is a link.’

  She taps the keyboard and the pictures Vish took of the woman in blue appear on the monitor.


  ‘We think she’s called Elena. We think she’s Spanish. And we’re using some facial recognition software to see if we can find out who she is. But she is wearing sunglasses, which makes it more difficult.’

  ‘In any event that’s a long shot,’ says Ingram. ‘Unless she’s got a criminal record. We’ve put in a special request for information to our colleagues in Spain. Sent them the images. But the murders, particularly the second one, are probably the key to this. She had some kind of row with Barry Porter shortly before his disappearance. Are these two things connected?’

  ‘Thanks, Danny,’ says Barker. ‘Megan, you were the officer on the scene last night. What do we know so far?’

  Megan stands up. A knot in her stomach tightens as all eyes turn to her.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘The post mortem on Barry Porter is scheduled for later today. But I spoke to Hilary Kumar this morning and we’re fairly convinced this is a gunshot wound to the head at close quarters. Looks like someone got hold of Barry Porter, shoved him in the boot of his own car, drove him to a secluded track on Dartmoor and shot him. After the PM we’ll have a better idea of the time of death.’

  Barker nods and turns to Slater. ‘Laura, you’re SIO. Talk us through what we think all this means.’

  ‘Well, first of all,’ says Slater, ‘let’s go back to the murder of Greg Porter. Bludgeoned to death with a hammer. It has all the appearance of a loss of control in an angry and personal attack. However, now we have DNA confirmation of Porter’s blood on the hammer it’s clear that it was the murder weapon, and since their fingerprints aren’t on it, we can exclude both his son and his wife from suspicion. And Kitty’s been through all the footage from security cameras at the Porters’ home for the night of the murder. Neither of them left the house. You want to add to this, Kitty?’

  ‘Just to say, boss, the boy was online playing Call of Duty: Black Ops until two a.m. His mother watched television in the sitting room and drank until she passed out.’

  ‘As a result,’ says Slater, ‘they’re no longer suspects. But Yvonne Porter, though not a reliable witness, claims her husband was with his mistress, Elena, that night. If this is true, we still may be looking at a personal attack. So she’s now our prime suspect. The question is, who is she? Yvonne confirmed when interviewed that this is the same woman seen arguing with Barry Porter. But the other potential link between the two murders is Yvonne’s sister, Penny Reynolds. We want to talk to her about where the money for the boats came from. She’ll be brought in later this morning and interviewed under caution. Megan and Sasha, I’d like you to tackle her. You may want to put your heads together and work out an approach. I think that brings us up to speed unless anyone has anything to add.’