BEYOND EVIL
Neil White
DI Sheldon Brown has never recovered from finding the body of Alice Kenyon brutally murdered, naked and abandoned in a pool. And he’s never stopped pursuing his main suspect, hellraiser and lottery winner Billy Privett either.So when Billy is found dead and, what’s more, viciously dissected, DI Brown’s obsession is rekindled. Who killed the notorious millionaire in such a bloodthirsty way? With jaded lawyer Charlie Barker – who desperately needs to pick up the pieces of his own life – Sheldon will uncover a world of drugs, long-buried secrets and a cult with a deadly conviction to their cause …
NEIL WHITE
Beyond Evil
To everyone at Avon
Table of Contents
Title Page (#u236661ba-7fc3-535a-a2a6-63472e265934)
Dedication (#u6d831825-86aa-5253-8c38-d660ba1f1473)
Chapter One (#ud4d46087-774b-5c14-9aed-f082c46e02da)
Chapter Two (#u0a63e2cd-f209-54dc-8542-77830650c3fb)
Chapter Three (#u58e704b6-9d12-59a3-b42f-e9c71d108f42)
Chapter Four (#ub6092a83-f8b4-5493-b3b4-2ef65451f524)
Chapter Five (#u72474528-352a-5365-8397-ce93fb16c19c)
Chapter Six (#uc51a509b-d994-538f-87ce-0595f01c6316)
Chapter Seven (#u628dcdb8-f1ce-56e5-96fc-ae0ea3504579)
Chapter Eight (#ub3bdf096-88a9-53bf-a4f4-02027881946b)
Chapter Nine (#u225605ab-35ef-54ce-be8f-83ba4a4ee7a9)
Chapter Ten (#ud898fe0d-2c52-51a3-8f1a-c3956d040383)
Chapter Eleven (#ua21ba29e-d19a-5e07-ab99-f0158ae6895e)
Chapter Twelve (#u7485ac9f-15a1-5b3e-a833-3b80e7bcb40a)
Chapter Thirteen (#u2d2c83e6-6a09-522f-96a9-a95e522cf14f)
Chapter Fourteen (#ubf79a18e-9a9d-50ce-bc2a-4f7e94a36ca9)
Chapter Fifteen (#uca3e48ca-1d1a-5c56-bd7c-4f85359b989a)
Chapter Sixteen (#ub1bd6960-1ef9-5707-a218-152c2efcbacf)
Chapter Seventeen (#u8717de87-44d8-5795-bb1e-bd24f61ebd7b)
Chapter Eighteen (#ub8985157-f0a6-5216-8f77-5937744ab13d)
Chapter Nineteen (#uba0de00b-4f28-55e8-bc87-641512517235)
Chapter Twenty (#u70ea6f2f-50d4-5cb3-8df6-25e3c789c12e)
Chapter Twenty-One (#ua579bfc4-c9c1-5283-9678-dfda11ccd50c)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#u635fd867-df53-5a1a-ba8a-ccfc03f4e5c0)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#u5a981a1b-20b8-5fa1-a09e-2d0d6dcb825d)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#u81e3f5ad-0adc-5c36-93cf-24e5e6cc4c65)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#u95832a07-0d4e-5d7b-b802-af8b9df441f6)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#udc7c3b35-25fd-5024-a483-1b2d771acd0f)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#ufea534a2-2952-5429-b6bd-79fce56c4361)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#u680075bc-6215-5699-8c49-7f7e5eb8b99b)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#uaac56a32-2cd3-5e7f-b6a3-447fa748bf48)
Chapter Thirty (#uea5d4460-8876-5cf9-b74f-7c7e845d6dca)
Chapter Thirty-One (#u5e7a67c5-6ac8-5efe-b25a-1d774b6c33b1)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#ubcae2e4d-1bb1-57da-8a3c-be9980e1e58a)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#uc3ae24f5-a44e-5d4a-97f5-4c822e7e22f2)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#u6c45064e-ec96-5fe3-9a4d-7dc7d6582f88)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#ued4988a6-311e-529f-bf0c-80a3442f8ebc)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#u455aecd5-2b48-5e82-b726-9df4392596bc)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#u36357077-4afa-5e91-9e50-35ecf0ad2375)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#ue35fa6a1-4265-5348-a3f5-abcaaf9ababe)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#u5b0a7971-b0d3-5d3e-807b-ac01d2979399)
Chapter Forty (#ub4415704-ecbe-5304-8ffa-78d00c488672)
Chapter Forty-One (#u1b3418d8-6e6f-533b-aa0f-1d17ae7ab700)
Chapter Forty-Two (#ue38d5147-7292-5491-8996-1adfa0c5284d)
Chapter Forty-Three (#u812c45ae-4d93-5ee4-9f9c-210ad4d13171)
Chapter Forty-Four (#u6e7c592a-db01-51c6-88ea-3bc6339f5911)
Chapter Forty-Five (#u26d433c0-6746-5030-8712-e60a46a33f12)
Chapter Forty-Six (#uf52572ef-697b-5041-99f0-fabba92796e2)
Chapter Forty-Seven (#u17df5d0d-784e-5ca2-a824-9ec78929c14e)
Chapter Forty-Eight (#ue267eadf-0f39-528e-91d0-8e3133601a30)
Chapter Forty-Nine (#u10f6391f-233b-51e7-8147-32a90c865078)
Chapter Fifty (#uca4c0a1e-66d2-5675-8593-d9ddf693f02d)
Chapter Fifty-One (#udf3c0bd1-75bb-5410-9c5b-d59067a5888e)
Chapter Fifty-Two (#u10ef8f5f-badf-5f8e-8b0f-f82ce03f5e9f)
Chapter Fifty-Three (#ud8baa6d6-52c8-55e1-b439-9fd6e05f0424)
Chapter Fifty-Four (#uae3665e3-8b4d-5315-bce6-012fd93a99aa)
Chapter Fifty-Five (#u60e6162b-e75d-5de7-bdb3-924641422297)
Chapter Fifty-Six (#u29006c7e-0bdb-5e1c-96d5-e2ac7e783f53)
Chapter Fifty-Seven (#udc7bc6f4-7542-570f-8c71-dd5256acd0c4)
Chapter Fifty-Eight (#ua997ad38-d269-583b-a875-2bd51e7dcc98)
Chapter Fifty-Nine (#uf9e71992-b668-551f-8f94-7b9270e5be11)
Chapter Sixty (#u1256f3d5-cbfa-5676-bd6e-6f6ca18a766c)
Chapter Sixty-One (#u30c4ac95-7267-598a-90f5-9db061413d6a)
Chapter Sixty-Two (#u32462181-9e15-57ea-ac3b-d1869515ac3c)
Chapter Sixty-Three (#u7ae6ef81-a067-5a07-b10c-6a9338ca067c)
Chapter Sixty-Four (#uf0079745-5c8c-564b-b239-152609b234ca)
Chapter Sixty-Five (#u7a832335-240b-56db-8bea-b8fe6dc7d987)
Chapter Sixty-Six (#u3566a2b3-30d7-5ba0-81b3-e74282b80377)
Chapter Sixty-Seven (#u94613622-829c-5f0b-ba2c-bb4444c793af)
Acknowledgements (#u01e3475e-82e6-50cb-a312-f2db84f4509a)
Neil White’s Writing Tips (#ub27f43b3-a50d-5248-8180-0edc1b461857)
About the Author (#u7665cb30-f6af-5538-90f8-e6ceac79c5a2)
By the same author (#u23052490-386d-5f99-9c35-2026fe31d27b)
Copyright (#u394ca176-d68a-50c3-a549-74b69d57d906)
About the Publisher (#u06ec9d67-6128-5ebf-ae0b-c7170118b632)
Chapter One
The blue flickers of the police lights dominated the view as Sheldon Brown looked out of his windscreen. He’d had the call thirty minutes earlier, and so had scrambled out of bed, the fatigue chased away by adrenaline. That had faded, replaced by the rhythm of his heartbeat, like flutters in his chest.
Sheldon reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out his bottle of diazepam, small blue wonders. He washed two down with a bottle of water. They wouldn’t take effect straight away, he knew that, but just the act of taking them made his fingers tremble less. He checked his reflection in the car mirror, that his tie was straight, his shirt not too creased. He didn’t look too bad. It was the middle of the night. That would give him some latitude.
He stepped out of his car and pulled at his shirt cuffs. The cold hit him straight away. It was summer, but the night air never stayed warm in Oulton, the Lancashire town that had become the hub of his police career. He had started out in the town as a young cadet, a few years spent sorting out the fights that spilled out from the pubs, the licensing hours just a guide, not a rule. His rise through the detective ranks took him to the larger towns in the county, but eventually he made his way back.
Oulton was the last stop before the moors, where the roads out of the valleys snaked upwards and towards Yorkshire, where there were few trees to stop the howl of the wind, just coarse grasses that grew wild. The town didn’t offer much for tourists other than a starting point to go somewhere else. There was a small maze of shops, once family-run businesses turned into charity shops and nail salons, but most of the pubs were boarded up now, victims of supermarket booze and the smoking ban. Weather-beaten terraced streets ran up the hills to empty patches of land where factories used to dominate. Some of the houses were rendered and painted in pastel shades, except that exhaust fumes and cold winters had turned them shabby, so that they were just dirty breaks in the lines of grey stone.
There were some elegant spots though, where the mill-owners had lived, grand stone gestures set in their own grounds, with curving gravel drives and wide lawns, nymph statues spraying water into lily ponds. The mills were gone, and so they made for large country hotels, used for weddings and by those walkers who liked to start their hikes as near to the top of the hills as they could.
Sheldon was in front of one of these hotels, the drive lined by marked police cars, headlights illuminating a huddle of people in uniform slacks and shirts. Ivy spread over dark grey walls and around white lattice windows, with wide glass conservatories along both sides. He took his suit jacket from the hook in the back of his car, and once buttoned up, he took a deep breath and set off walking. Just take command, was his thought, as he got closer. He tugged at his cuffs again. The gravel crunched under his feet, like loud cracks in the night. There were people looking out of their bedroom windows, curiosity beating sleep.
A uniformed officer walked towards him, his fluorescent jacket bright green in the darkness, bouncing back the weak light from the faux Victorian lamps that lined the driveway. His arms were outstretched, ready to turn him away. Sheldon pulled out his identification and said, ‘What time did the call come in?’
The constable held his hand up in apology and said, ‘Just after one, sir.’
‘Who’s supervising the scene?’ Sheldon said.
‘Sergeant Peters.’
Sheldon knew her. Tracey Peters, smart and ambitious, but normally on the burglary team.
‘You’re the first inspector to arrive, sir.’
Sheldon nodded, just to stop the panic rising. This could become his case, but he had to control it.
‘So what have you heard?’ Sheldon said.
‘You won’t like it, sir.’
‘I don’t expect to like it,’ Sheldon said, the words coming out clipped and precise. ‘I said what have we got?’
A blush crept up the constable’s cheeks. ‘A male, dead, in there,’ and he pointed towards the hotel. ‘There was a complaint about noise, and when the duty manager went to the room, he found a body.’
‘Any word on who it is?’
‘The room was booked in the name of John Bull, so I heard, but that sounds like, well …’
‘Bullshit?’
‘That’s the one.’
Sheldon set off for the front of the hotel. He went to a plastic crate filled with forensic suits, hooded paper jumpsuits packed into plastic wrappers. He ripped at the polythene and slipped one on over his clothes. Once he had snapped on the face mask, he set off to join the small huddle of white paper suits just outside the hotel doors.
The crowd turned to look at him as he joined, and when they realised who it was, Sheldon spotted the exchange of glances, the raised eyebrows.
‘How bad is it?’ Sheldon asked.
‘As bad as anything I’ve ever seen,’ someone said. He recognised the voice, and the long dark lashes blinking over the mask. Tracey Peters.
Sheldon nodded, and tried a smile. ‘A bit different to looking at overturned furniture,’ he said, and then, ‘how much of a mess have the staff made?’
‘No one stayed long enough to get near the body. As soon as they looked inside, they backed away, screaming.’
Sheldon looked towards the building but didn’t say anything for a while. He looked up at the bedrooms. Someone was taking photographs with a phone. A tale for the dinner party.
‘Let’s take a look,’ he said, and walked around the small huddle. He heard the boots of Tracey Peters behind him.
He climbed the hotel steps quickly and went through the revolving door. His footsteps echoed in the marble lobby, a walnut reception desk in front of him, a brass plaque reminding him of the hotel name. Sweeping stairways curled upwards behind it, lined in plush wine-coloured carpets.
Tracey stepped in front. ‘It’s at the back,’ she said, and led him away from reception and through a long room filled with high-backed chairs and a large stone fireplace.
They turned into a long corridor lined by doors. There were plates outside some, remnants of room service. Neither said anything. All he could hear was the rustle of their paper suits. His eyes scanned the walls for any blood smears that might have been missed, but it looked clean. At the end of the corridor, by an open fire door, he saw the bright glare of arc lights coming from one of the rooms and the bustle of more white forensic suits.
The crime scene investigators stepped aside as he got near. One was dusting the glass on the fire door, hoping for a print. Another was swabbing the doorframe for DNA, in case someone grabbed the door on the way out.
‘Anything yet?’ Sheldon said.
The dusting stopped for a moment and the tired eyes of a middle-aged man turned to him. ‘Nothing much, sir. All the blood is on the bed. No footprints in the room. There were handprints, but they were smears, and so no good for getting any prints.’
‘I’ll need to speak to everyone who was using rooms along this corridor, and the night manager,’ Sheldon said.
‘He’s been trying to get in the way since we got here, worried about his business,’ Tracey said.
‘He’ll have to keep worrying,’ Sheldon said, and then went into the room. He shielded his eyes as they became used to the glare of the lights, and once he was able to take in the scene, sweat prickled across his forehead and his mouth filled with acid. He looked away for a moment and took a deep breath. Once he knew that he was able to look again, he slowly raised his head.
There was a man in front of them, lying spread-eagled on a bed, his arms and legs pulled to the corners and tied to the bed legs.
‘That’s some extreme sex game,’ Tracey said, and she pointed to a ball gag that was discarded in the corner of the room, a leather strap with a plastic ball in the centre. Sheldon thought he could see teeth marks in it.
Sheldon let out a long breath. ‘I don’t think he was enjoying it,’ he said, and took a step closer, leaving Tracey nearer the door.
The man was naked. He didn’t look old, the Maori tattoos that swirled down from his shoulders giving that away, but it was what was above his shoulders that made Sheldon wonder if he’d sleep again that night.
There was a shock of black hair on the pillow, slick with blood, because where the face had once been there was just the bright white of cheek and jawbones, streaked red by blood and remnants of torn flesh and muscle. The eyes were still in place, and teeth seemed set in some final grimace. The face had been cut away in a neat shield, as if a stencil had been used.
‘Why would someone do that?’ Tracey said.
‘It makes him harder to identify, but that can’t be the reason,’ Sheldon said, his voice quieter than before. ‘Is the face still here somewhere?’
Tracey shook her head. ‘Not in this room.’
Sheldon closed his eyes.
‘There is a bit more to this,’ he heard Tracey say.
Sheldon opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘In what way?’
‘I spoke to the police doctor when he left,’ she said, and then raised her eyebrows. ‘He thought that the victim had been alive when it started.’
Sheldon looked back to the body on the bed and shook his head. The constable outside was right. This was going to be a bad one.
Chapter Two
The noise started in his dream. There was a bird on a branch, bright red and blue feathers, chirruping at him, but then the bird faded and the room came into view.
He was in bed and the chirrups were still there, except that they were now electronic. He groaned and put his head under the pillow. It was the telephone. He could ignore it, just wait for the answer machine, but then he realised that he couldn’t let it do that. He might need the call.
He threw the pillow to one side and stumbled out of bed. The floor swayed under his feet. He tasted the booze as he exhaled, stale and unpleasant, and then he pulled the discarded T-shirt from the front of the clock radio. Eight o’clock. Later than he thought.
The phone was still ringing.
‘All right, all right,’ he shouted, and made his way through his apartment, wiping his eyes. The answer machine beat him to it.
‘Charlie. It’s Julie. I can’t make it this afternoon. There’s been a murder. It was supposed to be my day off, but they’ve cancelled my leave to cover for those drafted in to help. We’ll do it another time, but we need to sort it out. And Charlie, you called again Saturday night. Don’t do it again, I told you. Andrew is getting sick of it.’
Then it clicked off.
Charlie sat down. This afternoon? Then he remembered. They were supposed to be sorting out their things, the breakup routine.
He put his head back and closed his eyes. He was glad he had avoided it. The apartment would need cleaning, and he didn’t need to look to know that there were the remains of a late night Sunday film session on the floor: a pizza box and a line of empty beer bottles. He would get a life-lecture from Julie if she saw it, and he didn’t need it. They’d been together for just a year, and he hadn’t changed. He was almost forty and was drinking too much when they got together. He was just the same a year on. He guessed she was supposed to change him. Was it his problem she hadn’t succeeded?
It was his own fault for getting involved with police officers, he knew that, but Julie hadn’t been the first. He was a defence lawyer, and the police had an expectation that he would be some successful go-getter, all about sports cars and the best restaurants. It had never taken them long to find out that it wasn’t like that, because some lawyers are just courtroom shouters and part-time ambulance chasers.
Julie had been one of the longer relationships, but that was only because of his reluctance to let her leave. She was attractive, tall and elegant and blonde, like a tick-list on a dating site, and they had got together during one of those long chats at the custody desk. He hadn’t fought as hard that day, and spent most of the interview watching her. They went out for a meal, and she moved in two months later. She moved out ten months after that, when she realised that they had nothing in common, and that Charlie wasn’t interested in finding anything they might share.
And then he remembered she mentioned a call. He sighed. He had done it before when drunk, just a call to see if she wanted to give it another try. It wasn’t that he even thought that way when sober, but bad ideas are sometimes crafted on the long weave home from a pub. Julie was with someone else now. Perhaps that was what rankled.
Charlie opened his eyes and stumbled to his feet, groaning at his reflection in the mirror. His dark hair was now streaked with grey and too long for his age, gathered in greasy curls around his collar. His beard was unkempt, more like he’d forgotten how to shave rather than he’d decided to grow one.
It wasn’t a good start to the week. His mother had always said that he would amount to nothing, and he thought he had won the argument by qualifying as a lawyer. Except that he had spent the next fifteen years slowly proving her right.
He looked away and went to the window instead.
His flat was on the top floor of a four-storey apartment block overlooking Oulton, blocking the view to the open moorland, the bricks clad in fake stone to make it blend in with the growing town. He got the sun as it set in the evening, and the views gave him something to look at when he was on his own, even the grey sprawl of Manchester, although the city buzz never got as far as the town.
The phone rang again, and he thought about not answering, but he didn’t think it would be Julie again. It could be a client, or the police.
It was one of the drawbacks of being a defence lawyer, that he had to be available when the clients needed him, but most calls meant nothing. Like relatives letting him know that their cousin or brother had been arrested, only to find out that the prisoner had chosen a different lawyer. But there is always the prospect that the next call will be the big one, the case that keeps the practice ticking over for another year. The large frauds are the best, where the volume of paperwork creates plenty of billable hours, but not many came in like that. Anyway, he wasn’t the sort who liked to spend his time scouring through paperwork. He knew what he was: a tub-thumper, defending on emotion, shouting for his clients in a small northern town. He had the guile and legal brain for trading blows with barristers in the Crown Court, and he had thought about going down that route, but he didn’t have the temperament. He might enjoy the arguments, but sometimes he fought too hard when finesse would be better, and he struggled to control his hackles when he heard the sniggers of the country-set.
And he’d have to shave more often.
He clicked the answer button, and it took him a few seconds to recognise the greeting as Amelia’s, his business partner.
‘Amelia? This is early.’
‘You’ve got a change of schedule today, Charlie,’ she said, her voice curt. ‘We’ve been burgled.’
The day was getting worse. ‘Anything taken?’
‘Not as far as I can tell, but there’s a broken window and they’ve been through the files.’
Charlie didn’t like the sound of that. Some of the town’s worst secrets were in those files, the real stories behind the crimes, not the excuses the defendants spill to their friends. ‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
‘No, I need you to go to court and deal with my cases. I’ll sort things out here. And there’s been a murder.’
‘Yes, I know. People are rushing to tell me.’
‘From the whispers I’m getting, it’s a bad one. You need to get to the police station.’
‘We’ve got the suspect?’
There was a pause, and then, ‘I don’t know if there is one, but I want you to find out what you can, in case they bring him in and he hasn’t got a lawyer. Your name might just tumble out of the custody sergeant’s mouth. You know how it works.’
‘I think I’m right out of all charm,’ he said.
‘My cases are quick, and I’ve checked your diary,’ Amelia said, not listening. ‘You haven’t got much on. Just try and get the gossip.’
Charlie wiped his eyes. He did know how it worked, but he wasn’t in the mood for a Monday morning schmooze at the custody desk. It wasn’t the sergeant who was important, but Amelia had never learnt that. She thought that a flick of her hair with a sergeant brought her work. Unlikely. Custody sergeants are immune to charm. No, the people who pass your name to the prisoners are the civilian jailers. Make friends with those people, and it is your name that gets mentioned through the hatch of the cell door.
‘How will I get access?’ he said.
‘I’m sure you’ll find a way,’ she said, and then there was a click.
Charlie stared at the phone as Amelia hung up. That was her way. No unnecessary politeness. Just get the job done. He was tired and feeling rough, but he had learnt not to question her methods. His name might be higher on the brass plaque outside the office, but she ran the practice because she had saved it.
He struggled to the bathroom, and was about to wipe the condensation from the mirror, but decided against it. He knew that he wouldn’t like what he saw. The beginnings of broken veins and purple skin under his eyes. He was thirty-nine years old, and looked already like the milestone birthday was a long way behind him.
When he came out of the shower, his eyes caught the empty side of the bed again. He still slept to one side, not used to the fact that Julie was no longer there, her tangle of blonde hair almost lost in the soft white pillow. A year-long habit was hard to break.
He looked in the wardrobe for his suit, but swore when he realised that it had been lying crumpled in the corner since Friday night. He pulled his emergency suit out of the wardrobe, all threadbare cuffs and shiny elbows. As he pulled on the clothes, tightening the tie around his neck and threading his cufflinks into his shirt, he started to feel like a lawyer again. It was always the same. Weekends in scruffs, weekdays in pinstripes, and the tightness of the shirt collar seemed to squeeze out the weekend.
He just needed a coffee and then he would be ready for the world.
Chapter Three
Sheldon Brown’s eyes were closed. There was sweat on his top lip and his fingers were clenched into a tight fist to stop the shakes. He breathed through his nose and began the countdown from ten.
He got to one and opened his eyes. His reflection in the mirror in the police station toilets gave nothing away. His dark hair lacked some shine, and there were purple rings under his eyes, but he had looked worse. He had got used to not sleeping.
He splashed some water onto his face and dried it off with a paper towel. He nodded at his reflection and then headed for the door.
As Sheldon came back onto the corridor, he became aware of the sound of men laughing and joking, waiting for the day to start. The squad was padded out with officers from other teams, drafted in to help with the routine stuff. The door-to-doors, fingertip searches. The door to the Incident Room was ahead, and he strode towards it. A voice from behind stopped him. ‘Sir?’
Sheldon turned round. It was Tracey Peters, the sergeant from the night before. Tall and brunette, with deep brown eyes, elegant in a fitted grey suit, she looked like she had caught the sleep Sheldon had missed.
‘Sergeant Peters, good morning.’
‘It’s Detective Sergeant, actually, although I prefer Tracey.’ She smiled. ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I have spoken to my inspector, and he says that if you want one more, then you’ve got me.’ When Sheldon didn’t respond, she added, ‘I was there last night, and so I want to see it through.’
Sheldon swallowed and nodded. People would be watching him. He would need all the help he could get. ‘Yes, thank you,’ and then, ‘it’s been hard getting the numbers in.’
Tracey grimaced. ‘I know how it is.’
Every team was the same. Budget cuts had decimated the force, and so every squad was running at its leanest. Sheldon had assembled a unit from whoever could be spared, with some drafted in from the nearest towns. They had taken over the small Oulton station, a stone block in the middle of the town next to the Magistrates Court, with old wooden windows and a genteel blue lamp hanging over the door.
There was supposed to be a detective chief inspector coming over from the Force Major Investigation Team, to see whether they should take over the case, but there had been a double murder on the other side of the county. Sheldon had been instructed to keep things afloat until he got there.
Sheldon stopped at the doorway of the Incident Room and looked in. The station wasn’t used to so much activity, and the squad looked crammed in. Condensation was building up on the windows and officers lined the walls, the few available chairs taken by the keen ones who had arrived first. He recognised all the detectives in there, testament to the twenty-five years he had put in, the eager young cadet turned into a jowly man in his fifties. As people saw him, the sounds of conversation died away, and they exchanged glances, some of disappointment, some of surprise.
Sheldon smiled, but it came out like a twitch, and then he walked in, his head up. All the eyes in the room followed him as he took a place at the front. The only sound in the room was the rustle of an envelope as he pulled out a set of photographs, and then the rip of sticky tape as he pasted them to the whiteboard at the front of the room. They were the pictures from the night before, the body on the hotel bed, strapped to the corners, the face sliced off.
Murmurs went around the room as they took in the images. Sheldon guessed that word of the body had gone round the station, but photographs made things more real.
Sheldon cleared his throat and then turned round to look at the squad. His hands went into fists again. ‘Last night was grim,’ he said. ‘I was there. I know how it was. We need to catch whoever did this.’ He tried to make it sound like a rallying call, but he was met by stares and silence. His tongue flicked across his bottom lip, waiting for someone to ask a question, just to fill the gap.
‘Do we know who the victim is yet?’ a voice said at the back. Sheldon recognised him. Duncan Lowther, the poster boy for the local CID. He was a hobby copper, inherited wealth funding his life, not the job. His was the Porsche on the car park, to match the expensive cologne, and the weekends spent in the wine bars of Manchester. He talked of great literature and art-house cinema, and didn’t wear the usual uniform of pastel shirts and chain store suits, preferring tight grey V-necks and silk ties.
Sheldon had seen too many coppers like him. All glory, no graft.
‘That’s the first thing we need to work out,’ Sheldon said. ‘Always start with the victim. And someone needs to go through the incident logs for the county for the last twelve hours, just to check if someone didn’t come home.’
‘Extra-marital?’ someone else said. ‘Maybe a jealous husband?’
Sheldon nodded. ‘Maybe. That is one angle. It was cruel, and so revenge seems a motive.’ He looked at the photographs again. ‘The face was removed and wasn’t left in the hotel room. We need to find where it went, because someone took it away for a reason, and so we need to know why.’
‘It could just be a random sick murder,’ Lowther said. ‘These things do happen. And does it matter why? It’s the who that’s important.’
Sheldon felt the smile grow on his face, although it felt tight and unnatural, and he knew it hadn’t reached his eyes. ‘Thank you for your wisdom, but if you get the why, you’ve got yourself a suspect list. And you’ve just got yourself the CCTV job.’ When Lowther looked confused, he added, ‘Go to the hotel and watch the camera footage. Account for everyone staying there. If someone comes in who you can’t put in a room, there’s your first suspect. Then go through the town cameras. Someone running, or a car going too fast.’ He looked around the rest of the room. ‘The rest of you. Divide yourself up into twos. It’s time to knock on doors. You know the routines. Get the paperwork in, look for the unusual, and let’s hope for a forensic hit.’
‘How long have we got the job in Oulton?’ a voice said at the back. ‘FMIT are coming over.’
‘I want to keep it with us,’ Sheldon said. ‘The people in this town know us and trust us. You know how it is around here, that they don’t like outsiders. If we let FMIT take over, people might clam up and we will lose that local contact.’
There were some murmurs of agreement, before everyone looked to the front, startled, as a uniformed officer burst into the room. He looked at the photographs, and then at Sheldon.
‘Yes?’ Sheldon said, irritated.
‘We’ve just had a call, sir, from the paper, the Lancashire Express,’ and he pointed to the photographs taped up at the front. ‘It’s about your case. They said they’ve got something you have to see.’
Chapter Four
Charlie walked to his office, as usual. Even though there had been a burglary, getting there earlier would only make a bad start come sooner.
The stroll shook off most of the booze from the night before, although he couldn’t get over the slump as quickly as he could a few years earlier. Managing a hangover was just about patience though, and so he knew he would be over the worst by lunchtime.
His apartment was at the top of the town, just so that they could sell it by the views. It wasn’t a long walk; just past the entrance to a council estate, where the street signs were obscured by graffiti, and then along a row of terraced cottages whose views across barren hills had been stolen by the march of progress.
As he walked past the Eagleton, the best greasy spoon in town, with large windows that were permanently steamed up, he heard someone ride alongside him on a bike, the tyres crunching on the small stones in the gutter. Charlie’s pupils were still sluggish, but he recognised him as Tony, one of his regulars. This was the part of the day when Tony made sense, before he stocked up on bargain vodka and watched the day dissolve into a blur of survival, every day just an attempt to get through to the next one. Sometimes he got into fights, just messy brawls most of the time, and that’s when he turned up at Charlie’s office.
‘Tony. How are you doing?’
‘Have you seen up by the Grange?’ he said, pointing over his shoulder, towards the moors. ‘There’s police everywhere.’
‘There’s been a murder,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s probably to do with that.’
‘Who is it?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
‘It must be someone important. I’ve never seen so many police.’
Charlie smiled. ‘We’re all important, Tony, even you.’
He was about to set off walking again when Tony said, ‘I’ve just had a summons, for threatening behaviour. I’m up next Thursday. I was on my way to your office.’
‘You won’t get legal aid.’
Tony scowled.
Charlie stopped walking and sighed. He knew the scowl. If Charlie wouldn’t do it for the goodwill, then someone else would. He remembered refusing to turn out for someone on a freebie, and the client killed someone two months later. The one who did the freebie got the murder.
‘Guilty plea?’ Charlie said.
Tony nodded.
‘Okay, I’ll see you there, but if something else comes up, you’re on your own. I’m yours if I’m available.’
Tony smiled. ‘Thanks Charlie.’
Charlie didn’t say anything as Tony set off riding again. People like Tony kept the work flowing. Sometimes he got paid, and sometimes he didn’t, but Charlie had to look after him for those days when he did, because he had chosen criminal law, the budget end of the trade. He remembered the brochures for high-earning corporate firms that littered the career racks at his university, attracting those with polished accents. The only child from his family to go to university, Charlie guessed at his limitations and aimed low. At least he achieved his aim, and it didn’t seem like failure.
As Tony rode away down the hill, Charlie noticed a group of people on the other side of the street. Six of them, all in black clothes, and Charlie thought they were looking straight at him. They were near the office, and even as Tony went past them, they didn’t change their focus.
That made him pause. For every client he had to defend, it usually meant upsetting someone else, like a victim or a police officer. Charlie paused for a moment, made some pretence about checking his phone, but when he looked up again, the group were no longer there.
Charlie frowned. Perhaps he had misread it. He shrugged and set off walking the last hundred yards to his office, above a kebab shop and accessed by a door squeezed between it and a tattoo parlour.
Charlie had set up his own practice five years earlier, when the firm he trained with started to replace the lawyers with paralegals. He had known that he was next in line, and so he went on his own. The dream of building an empire soon soured, with long hours just to make the practice break even, with too much time spent on practice management, just to prove that he was fit to do legal aid work. He had been on the brink of walking away from it all, knowing that he wasn’t cut out for it and that a job behind a bar might make him happier, when Amelia had approached him and said that she wanted to buy in.
Amelia Diaz. He had seen her a few times around court before then, and her appearance was hard to forget, with long dark hair and an olive-tanned cleavage that she flaunted at men to get what she wanted, and at women just to show that she had it. Her father was from Barcelona and had married an Englishwoman, except a northern upbringing had given her more brashness than Catalan swagger. Charlie hadn’t wanted a partner, but he was too desperate to turn her away, because it let him carry on being the only thing he knew he was good at – a Magistrates Court legal hack.
As he climbed the stairs, he could hear the coffee machine bubbling.
‘Amelia?’
She popped her head around the door of her office and scowled. ‘Glad you could make it. Come in.’
Charlie rolled his eyes at Linda, who had been his receptionist and secretary and office manager since he started, a woman with the stature of a bowling ball, with hair cropped close to her head.
He grabbed a coffee from the machine before going into Amelia’s room. There was someone else in reception, a skinny teenager, late teens, in a blue skirt and jacket. Mixed race, her teeth white as she smiled, bright against her caramel skin and the loose frizz of her hair. Charlie raised a hand in greeting and fought the urge to smooth down his hair. Then he caught his reflection in a picture frame, grey streaks and messy whiskers, and looked away. He was a generation too old, and he wore every year of it.
Amelia’s office was minimalist, with a coat of white paint and a glass desk in one corner. The carpet had been taken away and the floorboards stripped and stained white to match the walls, the old curtains replaced with modern office blinds. A computer hummed on the corner of the desk.
Except that it wasn’t in its usual tidy state. There were files strewn on the floor.
‘How did they get in?’ Charlie said.
‘They smashed the glass in the fire escape and climbed in through there.’
‘What about the alarm?’
‘It needs fixing, you know that.’
Charlie leant against the doorframe. ‘Did they take anything?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Amelia said. ‘It was more like a search. The monitors are still here. Even the petty cash tin and the television.’
Charlie frowned. ‘That worries me more,’ he said. ‘If they wanted something from the files, one of our clients might be in danger, if it’s important enough for a break-in. Have you called the police?’
Amelia thought about that and then shook her head. ‘If they want something from the files, the police will want to know what we think it is, and I’m not breaching a client’s confidence.’
He knew she was right. He represented burglars. He couldn’t get too worked up about one of them coming to visit.
‘Leave it, Charlie, I’ll sort it out,’ she said. ‘These are your files for court,’ and she handed over two blue folders.
‘And what did you say you were doing?’ he said.
She looked at him for a moment, as if she was about to tell him something, but then she sighed. ‘Sorting this out, and then some admin stuff; you know, like keeping the accounts up to date, and some bills. And I’ve got a private payer coming in to see me.’
He waved it away. ‘You can keep that one,’ he said. ‘They expect too much for their money.’
‘You should learn to love them, because they pay three times more than legal aid, and they won’t go through your handbag when they’re alone in the room.’
Charlie didn’t need Amelia’s take on the business. He had been doing the job longer than she had, and all Amelia could offer was something that he knew already but just didn’t want to hear.
He watched her as she sat at the desk. Charlie thought she seemed distracted, her scowls interrupted by the occasional faraway gaze.
‘You all right?’ he said.
She looked up at him, and Charlie saw vulnerability. It didn’t surface often with Amelia. A couple of times after too much booze, and when they’d talked money. Or the lack of it. Amelia was business-like, brisk, and could even be fun, when the wine flowed and the music was right. But today her eyes seemed a little wider than usual, more searching. It was just for a moment though. She shook her head, and then smiled. ‘I’m fine,’ she said.
‘Who’s the girl in reception?’
‘Donia. She wants some work experience, is about to go away to university. I thought you could show her round the court.’
Charlie rolled his eyes. Great. Now he had to babysit someone all day. This was Amelia’s idea of making business pay, getting students to work for nothing, all of them hopeful of some job opportunity that would never materialise.
‘She’s come a long way, from Leeds,’ Amelia whispered, her door open. ‘Even rented somewhere for the week. Be nice to her.’
He walked away and went to his own room. As he went past Donia, she looked up again, as if she expected him to stop, but he didn’t. There was no point in getting friendly. If she hoped for a training contract, she would be disappointed.
As Charlie went into his room, he was surprised. It was untidy, but that’s how he had left it. He put his head back out of the door. ‘Why just your room?’ he shouted towards Amelia.
‘You can ask them if we ever find out who did it.’
Charlie shrugged and closed his door. He threw his files onto the desk, before he let his feet join them as he slumped into his chair, an old burgundy recliner with coffee stains on the arms.
Charlie’s room was at the front of the building, because it came with a view of the street. It wasn’t much, just the curve of a cobbled street, but it gave him something to look at. It was the comfort to Amelia’s austere. The desk was old and scarred and faced the window, so that the sun had bleached out the varnish. There were some dirty coffee cups that had never made it back to the kitchen and a pile of files that needed work.
Amelia hated the premises, but Charlie refused to move.
So this was it, he thought, as he stared out of the window. The week was about to start. Just another grind through routine court cases. The week will end, and then it will be the same again. A lost weekend, and then Sunday spent wondering what he had said the night before. He watched an old woman walk up the hill, her back bent, as if she had spent most of her life walking up hills that were too steep to live on. That’s how it seemed in Oulton. Too steep, too cold, too isolated. The town didn’t grow or reinvent itself. It just crumbled a slow death, every closure bringing more boarded-up windows, and one more reason for people to head down into the valley and not come back.
As he looked out, he saw something further along the street.
There was the same group of young people he had seen outside the café, all around twenty years old, all in black, their hair long and dyed black to match, their faces pale. There were glints of metal in their faces. One of them had a guitar. He looked older than the rest, with wild dark hair and lighter clothes. Dirty denim rather than black. The others seemed to encircle him as they walked, and most seemed to be smiling.
They must have seen Charlie staring, because they glanced up as they passed below his window. The older one nodded, and Charlie thought he saw him smile.
Chapter Five
John Abbott squinted as he opened his eyes. It wasn’t a bright day, he could tell that from the greyness on the other side of the glass, and there were no curtains or blinds at the window. It was later than the usual waking time, because they woke with nature, but the night before had been a late one.
He waited a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, and then looked towards the window again. There were other people moving elsewhere in the house, but he wasn’t ready to get up.
He felt Gemma stir against him, her skin warm, her arm across his chest. His thoughts went back to the night before and he grimaced. It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. She’d been more excitable than normal and had chosen him again. He could have said no, that it wasn’t right, made up some excuse, but he didn’t. He gave in every time. It was the way she smiled at him, cute, coy, with large appealing eyes, and how she covered her mouth when she giggled.
It was more than just her appeal though. He had needed the warmth and the closeness, although in the harsh light of morning he knew he shouldn’t have done it.
Her leg moved across him and he pushed it away. The noises were getting louder in the house, and so he knew he had to get up. He moved her arm and slid out of bed, although that was a generous description for a mattress on the floor covered in blankets. Only a rug stopped his feet from hitting the cold wooden floor. He looked down. The covers had slipped from her. He shook his head. Gemma was too young, her shoulders thin and bony, her skin pale and mottled. Her face was too innocent for what had happened the night before, her nose small and dappled by freckles, wisps of mousy hair across her cheeks.
He padded over to the window and looked out. He was naked, but it didn’t seem to matter whether anyone could see him outside. The view calmed him. They were on the top of a long slope, with mist in the deep valley below, just bracken and gorse for the most part, but clusters of trees broke up the hills and sheep dotted the slope on the other side. John liked the isolation, the countryside the same as it had been for hundreds of years, the chimneys and terraced streets in a different valley he couldn’t see. He looked down at the Seven Sisters, remnants of a stone circle in the field in front of the cottage, just seven stone fingers rising out of the ground in a grey crescent.
They were in an old stone farmhouse, where everyone slept in cramped quarters, five to a room. The room he was in with Gemma was the exception, the party room, apart from Henry’s room, where he slept alone. The farmhouse owner slept in a room downstairs. John didn’t like to think of that, because he was neglected, too infirm to look after himself.
There was a noise behind him. He turned round. Gemma was sitting up, smiling. He went as if to cover himself, but she laughed.
‘Too late to be embarrassed now,’ she said, her voice light and soft. ‘Nothing is wrong that is beautiful, you know that. Henry said that.’
‘I know that, but, well,’ and he shrugged.
She reached over to the side of the bed and rummaged in a bag. She pulled out a spliff and lit the paper twist at its tip. That warm, cloying smell of cannabis drifted towards him. She took a hard pull and held it in, before letting it out with a cough and a smile. The first one of the day was always the worst. She leaned forward to offer it to him. ‘You’re free, babe. Leave your hang-ups behind.’
He was reluctant, but she thrust it again and said, ‘Come on, it’s okay.’
John went to her to take it from her and rolled it between his fingers, watching as the glowing tip turned soot-grey. He took a small drag and then hacked out a cough when he took in the smoke.
She laughed. ‘I thought you were getting used to it,’ she said, and then flopped back onto the bed.
‘How old are you?’ John asked, his eyes watering from his coughs.
Gemma wagged a finger. ‘I’ve told you before, details spoil a good time.’
‘It’s important though.’
‘But why?’
‘Because of what we did last night.’
‘You’ve so much to learn,’ she said, shaking her head, smiling. ‘You’re not bound by the old rules anymore. Freedom. Remember that word, John. It’s the whole point of us. Don’t you listen to Henry? The law is just what society says we cannot do, but we are not part of that society anymore. We are our own selves, free people, living human beings.’ She turned over and propped herself on her elbows, her chin in her hands. ‘Didn’t you enjoy it?’
John looked at the naked stretch of her body. Her smooth back, her pert backside, and his mind went back to the night before. ‘Yes, I enjoyed it,’ he said, and a flush crept up his cheeks.
She giggled. ‘I can tell,’ she said, looking at his groin.
He took another drag on the spliff and then bent down to pass it back to her. She smiled as she took it, her features lost in a pall of sweet smoke, and there it was again, that disquiet that there was something too childlike about her.
As Gemma took a hard pull, John asked, ‘Where did Henry go last night?’
There was a pause as she held the smoke in her lungs. She smiled as she let it out again, and then said, ‘Why?’
‘Henry went out again, and he goes out a lot. I’m confused, that’s all. He wants me to give everything up for him, for the group, but does he give everything up for me?’
Gemma sat up, her face more serious now. ‘You know things are happening. He has to arrange things, and so he has to meet people.’
‘But he could phone, or email or something.’
‘Haven’t you noticed yet, that we have nothing like that? They can trace where you are and intercept what you are saying. He told you that. Didn’t you understand?’
‘Of course I did. I just thought there must be a better way to organise things.’
Gemma frowned. ‘You ask a lot of questions.’
John paused before he answered. ‘Just curious, that’s all.’
Gemma looked at him, her head cocked, serious for a moment, and then she asked, ‘So how old are you? Thirty?’
‘Twenty-five,’ he said. ‘I’ve got an old face, that’s all.’
‘I like your face,’ she said, her voice softer. ‘Come here.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think we should. I can hear people moving around.’
‘Henry told me to make you happy,’ she said, and then she giggled, her hand over her mouth. ‘I can see that you are happy.’ Gemma parted her legs. Her hips were bony and thin.
John closed his eyes for a moment and tried not to think of how she had been.
‘Is Henry always going to approve everything?’ he said, and opened his eyes again. ‘How can we be free if we need Henry’s approval?’
‘Are you questioning Henry?’
John shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t do that, you know that.’
‘We have to fight for our freedom,’ Gemma said. ‘You do believe that, don’t you? We are building for something big that will make everyone take notice, and if you don’t believe that, well, there’s no point.’
John nodded, and took a deep breath. ‘I believe in us, you know that.’
‘So come back to bed, because if Henry decides that this shouldn’t happen anymore, it will stop, and I don’t want that, because I want to please you. And you want to please Henry, don’t you?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I want to please Henry.’ His voice sounded weak.
John went to the bed again. Gemma’s arms went around his neck and he felt her body begin to press against his. He closed his eyes as his resolve weakened, as she guided him towards her.
Chapter Six
Sheldon’s heartbeat was drumming fast again as he skipped up the stone steps to the Lancashire Express offices. Tracey Peters was behind him, walking with a crime scene investigator. There was a uniformed officer in a fluorescent green jacket by the corner of the building, someone’s arm around her. Further along, on a low stone wall, there were people gathered in a huddle.
The newspaper was produced from a large millstone building on the road that sloped down into the valley. It reported on the towns and villages along the Yorkshire border, with courtroom stories and council meetings, road crashes and summer fetes, its articles padded out by items pulled from the internet. Whenever they got a story that was big in Oulton, its base, the paper ran it for as long as people were still interested, and sometimes even beyond.
As Sheldon got near to the large double wooden doors at the top of the steps, someone stepped in front of him. Sheldon recognised him as Jim Kelly, the newsdesk editor, a man in his fifties who smelled of cigarettes and dressed like a journalist cliché, from the grubby blazer to his crumpled cords.
‘Inspector Brown, I was hoping it would be you,’ Kelly said, sweeping his greasy flick of hair over his head.
Sheldon stopped. He’d had press attention in the past, not much of it supportive, with the Express at the heart of it. ‘I hope this isn’t some kind of trick to get a quote,’ he said.
Kelly smiled. ‘It’s better than that, follow me,’ and he headed into the building, Sheldon walking quickly to keep up.
‘Seeing as though you’re here, Inspector,’ Kelly said, over his shoulder, ‘have you got anything I can print?’
Sheldon didn’t answer. Kelly had never been kind to the police in his reporting, and so he wasn’t going to get any special favours.
Kelly shrugged and just kept on walking. Sheldon thought he could see the trace of a smirk.
There were no people left inside, just small clusters of desks and computer monitors, the walls lined with framed front pages. The chairs were pulled untidily away from desks, as if people had left quickly. Their footsteps echoed as they walked, the ceiling high and arched, the building an old Methodist chapel converted fifty years earlier.
Kelly must have seen Sheldon looking at the empty office, because he said, ‘We thought they ought to wait outside until you’d finished.’ He pointed towards a desk at the end of the room, facing out so that it looked over all the others and towards the door. Kelly’s desk. There was a white cardboard box on it, like a cake box. ‘It was handed in at the front desk, in a plastic bag.’
‘Who delivered it?’
‘I don’t know. We don’t have someone at the front all the time. It was left on the desk, that’s all I know.’
Tracey went to the box first, but then let the investigator get in front so that he could take some photographs. Once he had finished, he stepped aside to let Tracey get a proper view.
‘There’s something written on it,’ she said.
Sheldon looked at Kelly, who nodded and said, ‘The face of greed. Has a certain sort of message to it, don’t you think? A great headline.’
‘Did you open the box?’ Sheldon said, his mouth dry, starting to guess what might be inside.
‘I didn’t know what was in there,’ Kelly said, defensively.
The crime scene investigator passed Sheldon a paper mask and a bonnet to put over his hair. Sheldon snapped them on and then went over to the box, pulling on latex gloves, Tracey moving to one side. He took hold of the box by the corners. A trickle of sweat made his eye sting as he started to lift off the lid slowly.
As the lid came off, revealing the contents, Sheldon had to take deep breaths in and out, to calm himself. He gagged but clenched his teeth and forced himself to stay in control. He glanced at Kelly over his paper mask, who said, ‘I spent the first ten years of my career taking photographs of road accidents. These things don’t bother me.’
Sheldon scowled and then closed his eyes to ready himself for what he would see when he looked in the box again. His forehead was moist. He counted to three and then opened his eyes.
There was white tissue, but most of it was smeared dark red. In the middle, nestling in the paper, was a face, except that it looked more like a grotesque mask. The edges of the skin were smooth, as if it had been cut away with a very sharp knife, but Sheldon could make out the more ragged pieces of flesh and muscle stuck to the underside, where someone had reached into the cuts with their fingers and pulled the face away.
But it wasn’t just the sight of the face that made Sheldon’s pulse quicken and a flash of sweat cover his cheeks. It was the feeling that he recognised the person, even though the face had no form, torn away from the bones that had once made the features unique.
He thought back to the body tied to the bed. It had been hard to guess the age. There were tattoos that made him look younger, Maori swirls on the upper arms and onto the shoulders, but the body looked older, pale and flabby.
The face in the box answered that question, the skin soft, a small dark goatee on his chin.
Sheldon’s knees weakened. It couldn’t be him. Jim Kelly was saying something, but the words were indistinct mumbles.
Memories rushed back at him. A dead woman, a large house, the floor wet with spilled booze, but there were no glasses lying around. The dishwasher was running but there was no one there. He had moved through the rooms, looking for an answer to the call that had come in, that a young woman was dead. Then he had found her, floating underwater in the swimming pool, almost at the bottom, naked.
Jim Kelly’s voice became louder. Sheldon opened his eyes and apologised. ‘Sorry, what did you say?’
‘Do I get a quote now?’ Kelly repeated. ‘Is it who I think it is? Billy Privett?’
Tracey said, ‘Shit,’ behind him, but Sheldon shook his head. ‘This does not make the paper yet.’
Kelly smiled. Sheldon guessed that he had already taken photographs, ready for syndication when the time was right, and he had the exclusive.
Sheldon turned away and headed for the exit, not bothering to say goodbye, knowing that the day ahead had got a whole lot more complicated.
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