by M K Farrar
He’d never felt this way before Hayley’s death. It had changed him.
He didn’t trust himself completely anymore. Though he had no wish to flip over the pub’s table and upset Nikki, now the thought had entered his head, he simply couldn’t focus on anything else.
“Is everything okay, Ryan?”
He realised she’d said something. “Sorry. I-I’m not feeling too good.”
Her face crumpled. “Oh, right.”
“I have to go.”
“Really? It’s still early.”
He was already on his feet. “I know. It’s not you, it’s me.”
She raised a slender eyebrow. “That old cliché?”
“It honestly is me, Nikki. I think this was too soon.”
“After your marriage? Is it because of your wife’s cancer?”
He couldn’t tell her the truth. He couldn’t tell anyone. He probably needed counselling but there was no way he’d sit down with some stranger and talk about his feelings. There was definitely no way he’d admit the sort of thoughts that crammed themselves into his brain either. Shame and embarrassment overwhelmed him.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, put his head down, and pushed his way out the pub door, leaving Nikki sitting there alone and baffled, and probably never wanting to see him again.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ryan barely slept the previous night. By the time he’d got back home, his compulsions had been raging out of control, and he’d spent hours walking back and forth between his flat and his car, first checking the car was locked, and then doing the same with the front door. He hadn’t even driven the car that evening, and he knew the compulsion was completely irrational, but the only way to get the nagging thought to subside was to check it, and then check it again.
He shouldn’t have asked Nikki out for that drink. Everything he’d feared had come true, except it also hadn’t. He hadn’t actually done anything bad or embarrassing—with the exception of walking out on her. It had all been in his head.
Was this his life now? Was he destined to be alone?
Get some help. It doesn’t have to be this way.
But how could he sit down and tell a complete stranger that sometimes he sat at the traffic lights, and, when people were crossing, the thought of stamping his foot on the accelerator and ploughing right into them popped into his head? He would never do it; of course he wouldn’t. He was a police officer, and he was on the right side of the law, not the wrong one. But the very possibility that he could do it terrified him, like he was balancing on a tightrope and all it would take was the lightest puff of air to send him teetering.
He groaned and rubbed at his tired eyes with the balls of his hands. He needed to wake the hell up and focus on where the case was going next. He didn’t seem to be able to get his thoughts to line up this morning, like he was working through a brain fog.
They were releasing the CCTV footage from the club this morning, and his team was braced for a barrage of what would mostly be useless phone calls. There would be plenty of time wasters phoning in, which was why they only ever kept this kind of thing for when they needed something fresh.
“Everything okay, boss?” Mallory asked him, pulling him from his thoughts.
He nodded and blinked up at her. “Yes, sorry. Just tired. Didn’t sleep well.”
“That have anything to do with meeting Nikki Francis last night?” she teased him.
If Mallory thought that he was tired because Nikki had kept him up all night because she’d been in his bed, she was definitely going down the wrong track.
“How did you know about that?”
She rolled her eyes. “You met her in the local. People talk.”
“Ah, yes. That probably wasn’t my best idea either.”
She must have picked up on his mood. “Things not go well?”
He didn’t want to admit to her his reasons for things going belly up. “Not exactly. Probably for the best.” He swiftly changed the subject. “Anyway, where are we with the case? Any developments overnight?”
“We’re still tracking down Matthew Gordon’s last movements, but the bank finally released his statements. Looks like the last time his card was used was in a bar in the city. I’ve requested CCTV footage from the bar, but it might be worth us paying them a visit.”
Ryan was happy to have an excuse to get out of the office. “Good idea.”
“Knowing what time he was there will also enable us to track him via the city’s CCTV cameras as well. Before now, it was a complete stab in the dark as to where we might have seen him and when, but now we can work through things strategically.”
They took Mallory’s car and drove to the address listed for the bar. It was still early, so the place was shut, but there were lights on inside.
Ryan pressed a buzzer for deliveries, and within a minute, a man in jeans and a t-shirt with the bar’s logo scrawled across the chest opened the door.
“Can I help you?”
Ryan showed the man his ID and explained their reason for being there. “We’d like to get access to your CCTV from that night, at the same time Matthew Gordon used his card. Is that something you can help with?”
He regarded them doubtfully. “Well, I’m the manager here, so yes, I’m the person who can help. But you’re asking for something from a couple of months ago. I’ll have to make sure it wasn’t wiped.”
“Do you wipe much of your CCTV footage?” Mallory asked.
He shrugged. “Keeps the costs down. Storage of footage from twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, starts to add up.”
Ryan’s heart sank. That would be just their luck. They finally got something substantial, and they might have wiped it to save a few quid.
“Come out to the back,” said the manager.
They followed them through the deserted bar and into an office.
“I didn’t catch your name,” Ryan said.
“Sorry, it’s Simon Hill.”
“Thanks, Simon.”
They let him start up the computer and search back through the cloud storage of the CCTV footage.
Simon shook his head. “No, sorry. We’ve got it set so it automatically wipes after thirty days.”
Ryan’s shoulders slumped. “Okay, thanks for checking.” He thought of something. “Can you search up the transaction that went with the card payment, so we can get an idea of what he bought? He spent seven pounds fifty, which makes me think he wasn’t just buying for himself. It might give us an idea of who he was with.”
The bar manager shrugged. “That doesn’t mean he bought a drink for two people. Plenty of people order a couple of drinks for themselves if it’s busy, so they don’t have to queue up again, or maybe they buy a pint and a shot as well.”
“Would a pint and a shot come to this amount?”
“Hard to say. Depends what he ordered.”
“Well, do you keep those records? Can you find out exactly what Matthew bought?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Of every drink sold and who we sold it to? I mean, we ring everything through the till—at least, the staff are supposed to—but if they paid by cash, we wouldn’t be able to trace it back to anyone.”
Ryan was starting to get impatient. “We know he paid by card. That’s why we’re here.”
“Right. Well, you’re going to have to give me some time. I can’t just bring it up straight away.”
Ryan handed him a card. “Call me as soon as you find out.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mallory stepped out onto the street, Ryan close behind her. The heatwave they’d been experiencing over the past week showed no sign of abating, and she flapped her hand at her face, trying to stir up some air.
“There are several street cameras nearby,” Ryan said, pulling up a map of each of their locations on his phone. “With any luck, we’ll be able to pick Matthew up on one of them, so we’ll get a better idea who he was with and where he was going.”
“I’ll reque
st the footage,” she said.
“Notice how the last place Jacob Tater was seen was a club, and how Luke Braun’s wife said that she’d assumed he’d gone out drinking. Now here we have Matthew at a bar as well.”
“You think whoever killed them might have spotted them in the pubs and bars?”
“I think it’s something we need to consider. Maybe it’s the same places dealers are hanging out.”
They drove back to the office. Mallory was glad to be back in the relative cool. An email was waiting for her, and she clicked it open. It was the forensic analysis of the paint fragments that had been found on each of the bodies. The paint was acrylic, the kind that tended to be used in art studios and would be sold in smaller pots, so making it unsuitable for larger projects, such as decorating. It was, however, widely available, so unfortunately it wasn’t as though they could track it down to a specialist shop or anything. She frowned and tapped her fingers to her lips. Could their killer be an artist? She quickly forwarded the information on to Ryan.
Mallory’s phone rang, but she didn’t recognise the number. “DS Lawson,” she answered.
A male voice spoke down the line. “Oh, yes, hello. This is Peter from a couple of doors down. Your neighbour.”
Alarm jarred inside her. Her neighbour? Why was he calling her?
“Is everything okay?”
“Not really, sorry. There’s been a bit of an...incident here.”
“An incident. Is my brother okay?”
“Oliver, isn’t it? That’s your brother?”
Her heart rate tripped, and she suddenly felt hot and breathless. “Yes, it is. Is he okay? What’s happened?”
She wished he’d just bloody well tell her. She normally considered herself to be pretty stoic in a crisis, but it was different when Oliver was involved. He was her responsibility, and if anything bad ever happened to him, she’d never forgive herself.
“The fire brigade are at the house. It looks like there’s been a fire.”
“Oh my God.” She was already on her feet, grabbing her bag. “I’m coming right now. I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
She ended the call and caught Ryan frowning at her from his desk.
“You okay, Mallory?”
“Not really. There’s been a fire at my house. I have to go. I’m so sorry.”
Ryan got to his feet. “Is everyone all right?”
“I’m not sure.” She realised she was on the verge of tears. She wasn’t a crier, but she hadn’t thought to press the neighbour on how Oliver was. All she’d thought was that she needed to get to him, fast. He could be in hospital or even dead by now. Would the local police have attended with the fire department? Maybe she could get an update that way.
Ryan strode across the office towards her. Her heart sank. Was he going to want her to brief him on where she was in the case before she left?
“What are you doing?” she asked as he passed her desk.
“Driving you, of course. I’m not going to let you deal with this on your own. And you’re clearly upset. I don’t want you driving too fast and ending up in an accident or something.”
She exhaled. “Thanks, boss.”
“Come on then.”
They hurried from the building.
“We’ll take a squad car,” Ryan said. “We’ll get there faster.”
He climbed behind the wheel, and Mallory ran to the passenger side and got in. She didn’t need to give him her address—he’d been there before and had met Oliver on the odd occasion, too.
Ryan drove as though he was going to an emergency—which Mallory guessed they were—with the lights and siren going, weaving in and out of traffic. It meant they reached Mallory’s street in record time, and though it was blocked off by uniformed officers, the sight of the squad car got them past. Ryan pulled up as close to the house as he could, red fire engines blocking them from getting any closer.
Before the car was barely at a halt, Mallory threw open the door and ran for the house. “Oliver!” she shouted. “Ollie!”
The house itself wasn’t as bad as she’d thought. She’d expected to see flames licking the roof, but other than smoke hanging in the air and a couple of firemen reeling back in a hose, things didn’t look too bad at all. She was conscious of the neighbours all watching on, probably happy to have this bit of excitement to break up their day. She should probably thank Peter for phoning her, but right now, all she cared about was finding her brother and making sure he was safe.
One of the firemen stopped her. “Is everything all right, Miss?”
“That’s my house. My brother was inside.”
“He’s right over there.”
An ambulance was on the other side of the fire engine, the rear doors open. Mallory ran over to find Oliver sitting in the back, flanked by two paramedics.
He saw her, and his face lit up, though his cheeks were streaked with tears. “Mallory.”
“Oh my God, Oliver. Are you okay? What happened?” She noticed the bandages on his hands. “Are you hurt?”
He lifted them for her to see. “I...I...I burned myself.”
Oliver often stuttered when he was upset, and her heart broke from him. “Oh, poor you. That must hurt.”
One of the paramedics smiled at her. “They’re going to blister and be pretty sore for a few days, maybe a week.”
“What happened?”
Oliver cast his gaze downward. “I sorry, Mallory. I made a mess with the toast and my hands hurt. It all went wrong.”
“How could toast go wrong? Did you set fire to the toaster?”
One of the firemen overheard and stepped in. “It looks as though something had fallen into the toaster, and when Oliver tried to use it, it caught fire, and then he panicked and tried to put it out with a tea towel that also caught fire. When he threw the towel down on the rug, the fire spread.”
Ollie’s lower lip quivered. “I sorry, Mallory. I was really, really scared.”
She gave him a squeeze. “Hey, you have nothing to be sorry for. It was an accident, that was all. It can happen to anyone.”
She meant it, too. These kinds of accidents can and did happen to everyone. Oliver had been living semi-independently for years now, and she didn’t want this to knock his confidence or give anyone else reason to question their living situation.
“But it didn’t,” Oliver insisted. “It happened to me. I burned the kitchen.”
“Don’t worry about the kitchen. That’s what we have insurance for. I’m sure it’ll just be a case of a bit of a clean-up, a lick of paint, and maybe a new toaster.”
“And a new rug,” he said. “And a new tea towel.”
“Those, too, but they don’t matter. They’re only things. As long as you’re okay, that’s all I care about.”
She was going to have to phone her parents and explain what had happened. She really didn’t want to—they would panic and fuss, and make things a hundred times worse—but she couldn’t hide it from them either. If she’d been the only one involved, she’d definitely have tried to hide it from them, but Oliver certainly couldn’t be expected to keep a secret, and she’d never dream of asking him to. It would only upset him. Besides, their parents would pop in and not only see the state of the kitchen but would also notice Oliver’s burned hands. Thank God he wasn’t more badly hurt.
Would social services be involved now? She hoped not. It was never a fun experience dealing with them. She understood that they were only doing their jobs, but, just like with her job, they tended to be suspicious in nature, and Mallory always felt as though she had done something wrong.
Ryan had been talking to a uniformed officer, but he touched the other man on the shoulder and nodded before approaching the ambulance.
“Hi, Oliver. How are you doing? Had a bit of an accident, huh?”
Oliver held up his hands again. “I got burned.”
Ryan pulled a face. “Ouch, I saw that, mate. Must sting.”
Oliver nodded. “It does.
It really does sting.”
“The doctors will make it all better for you.” Ryan turned his attention to Mallory. “I had a word with the attending officers. Since this was clearly just an accident, you can go back into your house whenever you want. It’s going to be a bit of a mess, though. The firemen’s hoses did a number on the kitchen.”
She sighed. “I know. It can’t be helped. I’m going to have to take the rest of the day off.”
“I wasn’t expecting you to come back in. Are the paramedics taking Oliver in?”
“It’s probably best that they do. He might have some smoke inhalation. At least they can keep an eye on him in there.”
“No! I not want to go to hospital,” Oliver protested.
She patted his arm. “It won’t be for long, Ollie. Everyone’s really nice, and they’ll take good care of you.”
His eyes went round. “Mallory coming, too?”
“Yes, of course I’m coming. I wouldn’t let you go on your own.” She smiled at him, aware that she was only telling half the truth. If she was going to get the house back in a liveable condition before Oliver came home again, she would have to leave him at the hospital for a couple of hours. She’d get their parents to come in and stay with him before she left, though.
“What can I do to help?” Ryan asked.
“You don’t need to do anything. You’ve already got your hands full with the case.”
“I can still help. Maybe I can call cleaners to come in for you? Or replace the items that were damaged?”
She appreciated him being so thoughtful, but it was bad enough that he was losing his sergeant, for the time being, anyway. She’d need to get back in to work in the morning. Someone else would need to help with Ollie.
She noted Ryan tapping his thumb to each of his fingers in turn and then repeating the process over and over. His lips moved slightly as he counted them in his head. The finger tapping was one of his more harmless habits. She’d watched him sitting at his desk, arranging and rearranging items over and over while he stared at the computer screen—the pen pot, the calculator, a holepunch—making sure they were each perfectly lined up, before that voice in his head must have insisted that they weren’t, and he’d start up all over again. Sometimes she thought he wasn’t even aware he was doing it. She’d only worked with him for a handful of years, but there was no doubt that it had got far worse recently.