Scared to Death: A gripping crime thriller you won’t be able to put down

Downstairs, her cottage’s sitting room was show-home spotless, exactly as she had left it: a cream sofa and two matching chairs separated by a reclaimed oak coffee table bare of clutter, fitted white-painted shelves empty of books and ornaments, the sole splash of colour, a vase of fresh daffodils that Ahmose must have left on the coffee table to welcome her home. Herself, by a long way, the messiest thing in the room.

Her gaze found the two framed photographs on the mantelpiece. Looking at Jamie, at his smiley face, all teeth and gums, lips ringed by a smear of chocolate ice cream, she felt the familiar emptiness in her chest, as if under her ribcage was nothing but air. Pushing away thoughts of him, of her past, she padded into the kitchen and made herself a coffee – strong, topped up with lots of full-fat milk, straight from the farm, that Ahmose must have put in her fridge yesterday, along with the bread and butter, lined side by side on the top shelf, an identical space between each item, Ahmose trained now to defer to her extreme sense of order.

She put the kettle back on its stand, straightened the handle flush with the wall, and then deliberately gave it a nudge, knocking it off-kilter. No hiss from the electric suit. No immediate urge to realign it. Not yet. Baby steps, she knew, but progress all the same. Progress she had worked hard, before leaving for her foreign tour, to achieve. Progress that she was determined to maintain, now, coming home.

Unlocking the back door, she stepped out into the garden, glancing up at Ahmose’s bedroom window as she did so. Lights off, curtains closed, still asleep as any sensible person who wasn’t a shift worker or in the Army should be at this pre-dawn hour. Moving slowly across the dark lawn, she inhaled deeply. The air was cool and clean, carrying a faint scent of water on cut grass, the lawn crisp and damp beneath her bare soles. At the bottom of the garden, she settled herself on to the wooden fence and gazed across the farmer’s field. The sunrise was still only a narrow strip of fire on the horizon, the sky above inky blue-black, the somnolent sheep in the field hummocks of barely visible grey, the spring lambs, cleaner, brighter, lying tight against their mothers’ stomachs for warmth.

Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep …

A peaceful pre-dawn, bearing the promise of a beautiful morning.

Home. She was home. Home safe. So why did she still have this odd sensation of emptiness in her chest? Jamie, yes – but something else too. What did she have to worry about? Nothing. She had nothing, or did she?

5

‘Midnight?’ Detective Inspector Bobby ‘Marilyn’ Simmons snapped. ‘You first noticed the pram at midnight?’ Tugging up his suit jacket sleeve, he tapped his watch with a nicotine-stained index finger. ‘As in midnight eight hours ago?’ His eyes blazed as he looked at the prim, mousy-haired woman in front of him who was clutching a mug of coffee emblazoned with the words Fill with coffee and nobody gets hurt and staring at him as if he was the devil. At least she had the good grace to blush.

‘The baby was asleep.’ She folded her arms defensively across her bust and tipped back on her heels. It was obvious that she was uncomfortable with his proximity, but he was in no mood to take a step back, out of her personal space, and make it easier for her. ‘I thought that the pram was empty.’

Marilyn – a nickname he had acquired on his first day with Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes, the bi-county joint command serious crimes investigation team, thanks to an uncanny resemblance to the ageing American rocker Marilyn Manson – sighed and rubbed a hand over his mismatched eyes. He had a persistent, throbbing headache, which he knew was well-deserved payback for last night’s 2 a.m.’er, knowledge that didn’t make dealing with it any easier. He could murder a cup of that coffee she was clutching. He was also fully aware that he was being an arsehole, could feel disapproval bleeding off Detective Sergeant Sarah Workman standing next to him, her lips pursed, he could tell even without looking. But he wasn’t feeling generous enough to give anyone a break this morning.

The Accident and Emergency waiting room was standing-room only: rows of blue vinyl-upholstered seats, every one of them occupied, a tidal wave of groans, coughs, hawks and the occasional deep-throated retch submerging their conversation. A vending machine was jammed against the wall the other side of the entrance door from the chairs, dispensing fizzy drinks, crisps and chocolate bars to the sick. The great unwashed. The last time he had set foot in a hospital, Southampton General, was four months ago, to collect Dr Jessie Flynn – who he’d worked with on a murder case late last year and fished out of Chichester Harbour, hypothermic and with a gunshot wound to the thigh – and drive her home. That had been a serene experience compared to this one. This A & E department made the rave he’d been at last night feel positively Zen.

‘As you can see, we’re an extremely busy Accident and Emergency department, Detective Inspector,’ the receptionist – Janet, her plastic name badge read – informed him. ‘And occasionally things get missed.’

Marilyn pulled a face. ‘Remind me not to come here when I’m sick. If you can’t spot a bloody baby, you’ve got no chance diagnosing disease.’

‘That day may come sooner than you think.’ Her voice rose in pitch, wobbled. ‘Cancer, I’d say.’

Marilyn raised an eyebrow. ‘Excuse me?’

‘The smell. Smoke. You reek of it.’ She waved a hand in front of her face. ‘You’d be doing yourself, and us, a good turn if you gave up. Now if that’s all, Detective Inspector, I’ll be getting back to work. We are one the best-performing A & E departments in the country with one of the lowest mortality rates and I’d like to do my bit to keep it that way.’ Turning on the sole of one squealing Dr Scholl, she slap-slapped her way down the corridor.

Marilyn glanced at Workman. ‘That went well, Sergeant.’

DS Workman sighed. ‘Shall I get forensics in here, sir?’

‘It’s a baby, Workman, not a corpse. We just need to find the next of kin, pronto.’

‘I’ve been calling the parents. The father left his wallet under the pram. No joy on his home or mobile numbers.’

The air was getting to Marilyn: a stifling smorgasbord of antiseptic, body odour, vomit and the rusty smell of dried blood, all cooked to perfection in the unseasonally warm spring sunlight he could feel cutting through the glass sliding doors behind him. The temperature must be hitting seventy, he thought, despite the best efforts of the air-conditioning unit groaning in the ceiling above him. Although he had chosen to specialize in major crimes, he didn’t have an iron stomach and twenty years of dealing with violent assaults, rapes and murders across Surrey and Sussex, had failed to strengthen it. But, he consoled himself, feeling a pang of guilt at his attitude towards the overworked receptionist, at least he didn’t have to deal with the walking dead who inhabited A & E. The dead he dealt with were certifiably dead, door-nail dead, laid out on metal gurneys, swabbed, wiped down, sexless and personality-less, more akin to shop dummies than recently living, breathing people with hopes and dreams, the single-digit temperatures in the autopsy suite keeping a lid on the most visceral of smells.

‘I’ll be back in a minute, Workman. Keep trying the dad and if we can’t get next of kin by midday, call Children’s Services. We’ll get the kid into a temporary foster home.’

Exiting the hospital building, he crossed the service road, skirting around an ambulance that was disgorging a gargantuan man on a stretcher, the ambulance crew scarlet with strain. Grateful for the fresh air, he leant back against the brick wall and rolled a cigarette. The sky was a relentless clear blue, wispy cotton wool streaks of cirrus lacing it, the sun a hot yellow ball which, even with his dark glasses on, made his one azure eye tear up. Shuffling sideways, he hunkered down in the patch of shade thrown by a bus shelter and lit his roll-up. Back across the service road, patients in hospital gowns crowded next to the A & E doorway, sucking on cigarettes, a few clutching the stem of wheeled metal drip stands, tubes running, via needles, into their bandaged arms. The cloud of smoke partially obscured the sign behind them that read, Strictly a Smoke-Free Zone. Jesus! Janet was right. He needed to give up smoking, drinking, drugs, the works and pronto. Put a stop to the relentless downward slide that was his health before he ended up swelling their ranks in a flapping, backless hospital gown.

DS Workman was crossing the service road towards him. In her beige flats, matching beige shift dress, the hem skimming her solid calves, brown hair cut into a low-maintenance chin-length bob, she could have come straight from the hospital admin department. She looked as diligent and efficient as she was, but her appearance also belied a quiet, cynical sense of humour that ensured their minds connected on a level beyond the mundane, and, anyway, where the hell would he be without her to back him up, dot the i’s, cross the t’s?

‘I managed to reach the little boy’s grandmother. She’ll be here in an hour or so.’

‘An hour? Can’t she get here more quickly than that?’

‘She lives in Farnborough and doesn’t have a car.’

‘Can’t she jump in a cab?’

‘I got the sense that taxis were out of her price range, sir.’ Flipping open her notebook, she ploughed on before he could make any more facetious remarks. ‘She said that the baby, Harry, he’s called, lives with his father, her son. She said that he, the father, Malcolm, has been off work for a year with depression.’

Marilyn nodded.

‘She sounded upset, very upset. I tried to reassure her, but she’s convinced that something terrible has happened to him.’

‘Where’s the baby’s mum?’

‘I gather she’s no longer in the picture.’

‘Surname?’

‘Lawson.’

‘Lawson?’ Flicking his roll-up into the gutter, Marilyn looked across and met Workman’s gaze, his forehead creasing in query. ‘Is it a coincidence that his name rings a bell?’

Workman shook her head. ‘Daniel Lawson, sir.’

He racked his brains. Nothing.

‘Danny,’ she prompted. ‘Private Danny Lawson.’

It still took him a moment. Private Danny Lawson. ‘Oh God, of course.’ Tugging off his sunglasses, Marilyn rubbed a hand across his eyes. Christ, Malcolm Lawson. That was all he needed. He’d had considerably more than he could stomach of the man six months ago.

‘I think we should have a counsellor here when Harry’s grandmother arrives, sir.’

‘With Malcolm Lawson in the picture, I need a bloody counsellor, Workman,’ Marilyn muttered.

With an upwards roll of her eyes that he wasn’t supposed to have noticed, Workman pressed on: ‘Doctor Butter is on annual leave and time is obviously too short to find a counsellor from a neighbouring force.’

Marilyn sighed. Why was he being so obnoxious? No explanation, except for the fact that everything about this hospital was putting him in a bad mood. The detritus of human life washed up on its shores. Something about his own mortality staring him square in the face.

And the baby?

When DS Workman had first telephoned him about a baby abandoned at Royal Surrey County Hospital, he’d acidly asked her if she had a couple of lost puppies he could reunite with their owners or a kitten stuck in a tree he could shin up and rescue. But now, something about this abandoned baby – Harry Lawson – and the history attached to that child’s surname, was giving him a creeping sense of unease.

‘Leave it with me, Sergeant. We do have a tenuous Army connection, so I’ll call Doctor Flynn. I’m sure she’s back from the Middle East this week.’

Malcolm Lawson.

He thought he’d well and truly buried that name six months ago. Buried that family. Buried the whole sorry saga. He forced a laugh, full of fake cheer.

‘Those Army types spend ninety per cent of their time sitting around with their thumbs up their arses, so I’m sure Jessie could spare an hour. Find us a nice quiet room where we can chat to Granny.’

6

The sun was a blinding ball in an unseasonally cloudless, royal-blue sky when Jessie gunned her daffodil-yellow Mini to life, pleasantly surprised that, after so long un-driven, it started first time. She’d popped in to see Ahmose, had been persuaded to stay for a cup of kahwa, strong Egyptian coffee – a terrible idea in retrospect, layered on top of the two cups she’d already downed at home, the time zone change and the jet lag. She felt as if a hive of hyperactive bees had set up residence in her head. Negotiating a slow three-point turn in the narrow lane, she pressed her foot gingerly on the accelerator, the speedo sliding slowly, jerkily – God, have I forgotten how to change gears? – to twenty, no higher. She’d had a near miss with the farmer and his herd of prize milking Friesians last summer while speeding down the lane towards home after a long day at Bradley Court, windows down, James Blunt full volume, and his threats of death and destruction to her prized Mini at the hands of his tractor had been an effective speed limiter ever since.

Fifteen minutes later, she slowed and turned off the public road into Bradley Court Army Rehabilitation Centre. Holding her pass out to the gate guards, she waited, engine idling, while the ornate metal gates were swung open. The last time she had driven along this drive, in the opposite direction, the stately brick-and-stone outline of Bradley Court receding in her rear-view mirror, it had been mid-December, mind-numbingly cold, slushy sleet invading the sweep of manicured lawns like wedding confetti, the trees bleak skeletons puncturing a slate-grey sky. Early April, and the lawn on either side of the quarter-mile drive was littered with red and blue crocuses, the copper beeches that lined the tarmac ribbon unfurling new leaves, hot- yellow daffodils clustered around their bases. Someone had set a table and chairs out on the lawn in front of an open patio door and a group of young men were sitting around it playing cards. Two others on crutches, each with a thigh-high amputation, were making their way along a gravel path towards the lake, both coatless, their shirt sleeves rolled up.

Parking, she made her way up to the first floor where the Defence Psychology Service was located, sticking her head into office doors as she passed, saying her hellos.

‘The nomad returns. Welcome back, Doctor Flynn.’

Gideon Duursema, head of the Defence Psychology Service and Jessie’s boss, half-rose from behind his desk and held out his hand. It felt strange, to Jessie, shaking it. She couldn’t recall ever shaking Gideon’s hand, with the exception of during her job interview and on her first morning at Bradley Court two and a half years ago, when he had formally welcomed her to the department. Gideon must have felt the same sense of oddness, because he dropped her hand suddenly, skirted around his desk and pulled her into a brief, slightly awkward hug.

‘We’ve missed you,’ he muttered, retreating to safety afforded by the physical barrier of his oak desk, lowering himself into his chair. ‘How was the tour?’ he asked, when she had settled herself into the chair opposite.

‘Now I know what living in prison feels like, except that prisoners get better food and their own television set.’

Gideon laughed. ‘Did they chain you up in the bowels of the boat 24/7?’

‘Ship.’ She half-smiled. ‘Ship is the technical naval term. Type 45 Destroyer, if I’m being really pedantic.’

‘Pedantic is good in this job. I like pedantic, but not when it’s directed at me. Type 45 Destroyer. Did they chain you up in the bowels of the destroyer 24/7?’

‘I must have been away from other lunatic psychologists for too long – you’ve lost me completely.’

Holding up a paint brochure, squares of bland off-whites, insipid greys and beiges lined down the page, he squinted at her through one eye.

‘Farrow and Ball colour trends, 2016. Tallow – a perfect match, I’d say. You mustn’t have seen the light of day. Certainly not the light of any Middle Eastern sun, anyway.’

Jessie rolled her eyes. ‘My skin colour is on trend, if nothing else.’ She waved a hand back over her shoulder towards the door. ‘Should we try this again, perhaps? I’ll go out, come back in and you can attempt to avoid the insults. We don’t all have the benefit of a year-round tan.’

Gideon smiled. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve missed you. It’s been dull around here without your chippy attitude to keep me on my toes.’

Originally from Zimbabwe, these days he was almost more English than the English with his tweed jackets, faux Tudor semi-detached on the outskirts of Farnham, Land Rover Discovery, solid middle-class wife and two boys. Jessie had met his sons once, had felt gauche and awkward beside them even though she was five years older than the eldest – both boys a stunning, olive-skinned mix of their black father and English rose mother, both following their father to Oxford.

‘Has Mrs D roped you into doing some DIY?’

‘Sadly, yes, as my pitiful government salary doesn’t run to the eye-watering sums charged by Home Counties building firms.’ Flipping over the brochure, he read in a desiccated monotone: ‘“Is your kitchen looking tired and dated? We can simply resurface your current cabinets in a colour and finish of your choice.”’ He tossed the brochure on the desktop. ‘Various shades of battleship, sorry, destroyer grey are all the rage these days, evidently, though why Fiona can’t continue residing with the browns we have lived with happily for the past twenty years, I have no idea. Never mind the damn kitchen, it’s me who’s tired and dated. Maybe Farrow and Ball can resurface me while they’re at it, two for the price of one.’ Reaching for his bifocals, sliding them on to the bridge of his nose, he fixed Jessie with a searching gaze. ‘Ready to get back to work?’

‘I assume from your tone that my answer needs to be an emphatic “yes”.’

Gideon patted a stack of files on the corner of his desk, ten centimetres high. ‘Preferably accompanied with a beatific smile and boundless energy.’ Sliding a thin cardboard file from the top of the stack, he held it out to her. ‘Here’s your number one. Ryan Jones: sixteen-year-old male trainee, Royal Logistic Corps, Blackdown Barracks. Referred by Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace.’

Jessie flipped open the file. One typed sheet inside. ‘Why was he referred?’

Gideon shrugged. ‘An open-ended “we’re concerned with his mental state”.’

‘Isn’t the CO a bit high up to be referring trainees?’

Another shrug. ‘From what I know of Philip Wallace, he likes to have his finger in every pie on that base.’

Jessie nodded, taking a moment, eyes grazing down the first page to digest the key details of the referral. Gideon was right – there was little more information than he had just told her. The referral was a triumph of saying nothing in one page of tight black type.

Ryan Thomas Jones

Sixteen and five months

Joined the Army on 2 November last year, the day of his sixteenth birthday

Keen.

Keen or running away from something. In Jessie’s experience, people joined the Army for one of three reasons: patriotism, financial necessity, or to escape. There was a fourth, she privately suspected, though had never voiced: the opportunity to kill people legally. That last one was reserved for the nutters. Which one was Ryan Jones? Probably not the fourth, as Loggies weren’t frontline fighting troops.

Looking up, she met Gideon’s gaze. ‘When is he coming in?’

‘Two p.m.’

‘Oh, OK. So I get the morning to organize my office, drink coffee, chillax. That’s unexpectedly generous of you—’ She broke off, catching his expression. ‘No … I don’t get the morning to chillax. Instead, I get to …’ She let the sentence hang.

‘You get to go to Royal Surrey County Hospital.’

‘And why would I want to do that?’

‘I got a call from Detective Inspector Simmons ten minutes ago. He needs your help.’

‘Since when did we provide psychologists to Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes?’

‘Since DI Simmons asked me nicely. It seems austerity is pinching them as hard as it’s pinching us.’

‘Why does he need a psychologist’s help at the hospital?’

‘He’ll fill you in.’

‘Cryptic.’

‘Not deliberately so. There is an Army connection, he said.’

Jessie’s eyebrows rose in query, but Gideon didn’t provide her with any more information. Stretching his arms above his head, waving one hand vaguely towards the window as he did so, he added, ‘I was in a meeting when Simmons called, so our conversation was brief. You’d better get going. He’s there now, waiting for you at the entrance to A & E, and I have another meeting starting’ – he glanced at his watch – ‘five minutes ago.’ He began searching around under the piles of files, books and papers on his desk, continuing to talk as he did so. ‘Welcome back, Jessie. As I said, I’ve missed you.’ A fleeting, wry smile. ‘And so, as you can see, has my desk. It has felt your absence most keenly. You can’t see my mobile anywhere, can you?’

Ducking down, she retrieved Gideon’s mobile from the floor and handed it to him. ‘Here.’

‘Ah. Thank you.’

‘But that’s it. No more Mrs Doubtfire from me.’ Rising, she tucked Ryan Thomas Jones’s file under her arm. ‘Your desk is going to have to make its own way in the big wide world without my help. Sink or swim. Eat or be eaten.’

Gideon’s eyebrow rose, but he didn’t reply. As she left the room, Jessie glanced back. He was still watching her, the expression on his face conflicted: a part of him hoping that she was right; the other part knowing, from thirty years’ experience as a clinical psychologist, that such deep-seated psychological disorders as hers were far from simple to cure. Jessie hoped that she was right too. She had navigated this morning without so much as a tingle from the electric suit; had navigated her time abroad with only three mild episodes. She’d even managed to leave the house with the kettle handle crooked and an unwashed coffee cup in the sink. Progress. Real progress.

She hoped that settling back into her normal routine would do nothing to disturb the delicate balance of her recovery.

7

Lieutenant Gold was already at the crime scene when Captain Ben Callan, Royal Military Police Special Investigation Branch, parked his red Golf GTI in the car park at Blackdown Barracks. Climbing out of the driver’s seat, he stood – too quickly – swayed and grabbed the top of the door to steady himself. Fuck. He still felt sick and shaky, as if he was coming down off a drinking spree, which he wasn’t. A hangover would, though, provide a plausible excuse for his wrecked physical and mental state. Nothing unexpected in soldiers getting drunk off-duty; it was virtually compulsory.

He’d had some warning of the fit this time: the car in front of him in the fast lane on the A3 starting to jump around as if it was on springs, the central reservation fuzzy, as though his windscreen was suddenly frosted glass. Swerving straight across both lanes, he cut on to the hard shoulder, narrowly missing an elderly couple in an ancient Nissan Micra; the glimpse he’d had of the driver’s whitened face and wide eyes in his rear-view mirror still etched in his mind.

The ground fell away steeply from the hard shoulder into a deep ditch of tangled undergrowth and he slithered down it, making it only halfway before his knees buckled. Falling, rolling, he reached blindly for something to slow his descent, felt reed grass slice through his fingers. His body was writhing, slamming from side to side, legs cycling in the muddy soil and he was freezing cold, shaking uncontrollably, his brain feeling as if it would explode from the pressure inside his skull. Slowly, the fit receded. He lay on the damp ground, sweating and shaking, feeling the muddy ditch water seeping through his clothing, chilling his skin. Pushing himself on to his knees, he reached for the trunk of a sapling, hauled himself to his feet, wincing as the cuts on his fingers met the rough bark. On unsteady legs, he made his way slowly back up the embankment. A Surrey Police patrol car was parked behind his Golf, flashing blue lights washing the uniformed traffic officer standing in front of it neon blue.