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

‘You do know that it is illegal to stop on the hard shoulder for any reason other than an emergency, don’t you, sir?’

Sir. The policeman’s tone entirely at odds with his words. Just what I need right now. Reaching into his back pocket, Callan fished out his military police ID, held it up. The traffic cop studied it, his gaze narrowing.

‘What were you doing, sir?’

Which story was the more convincing? Having a piss? Answering a vital phone call? The truth, not an option. As an epileptic, he shouldn’t hold a driving licence, but if his condition was made public, losing his licence would be the least of his problems. He would lose his job, his livelihood, his future. His tenuous clutch on normality.

‘I was answering a call on my mobile. There’s been a suspicious death at an Army training base near Camberley. I’m on my way there now.’

The policeman’s gaze tracked from Callan’s face to his feet, taking in the sweaty, greyish-pale complexion, the hands jammed in his pockets to stop them from trembling, the mud caked on his white shirt and jeans.

‘If you weren’t an MP, I’d breathalyse you.’

‘I’m not over the limit, Constable.’

‘You don’t look great, sir.’

‘I don’t feel great, but it’s not alcohol. It’s lack of sleep, too much work … You know how it is.’ Callan lifted his shoulders, looking the constable straight in the eye, the lie sliding smoothly off his tongue.

Silence, which Callan had the confidence not to break. He maintained eye contact, an easy smile on his face, posture relaxed, hoping the constable didn’t notice that his legs were shaking.

‘Drive slowly, mate. My shift ends in two hours and I don’t fancy spending it scraping anybody off the central reservation. Even a bloody MP.’

Callan held out his hand; the constable didn’t take it.

‘You’ve had your one favour,’ he muttered. ‘Next time, I throw the book at you.’

Callan stood by his Golf and watched the patrol car pull back into the flow of traffic and accelerate away. Twisting sideways, he retched on the grass. Retched and retched until only his stomach lining remained.

8

Squeezing her Mini on to the grass verge, the only spare inch of space available in the hospital car park, ignoring the dirty looks thrown her way by people in huge four-by-fours who were still circling, trying to find a space, Jessie jogged down the stone stairs and across the service road to A & E. Holding her breath as she ducked through the cigarette smoke fogging the entrance, she found Marilyn waiting for her inside. He was propping up the wall by the reception desk, one sole tapping impatiently against the skirting, thumbs skipping across the keys of his mobile. At the sound of her footsteps, he glanced up, his lined face creasing into a smile.

‘Thank you for coming, Jessie.’ A glance towards the packed A & E waiting room. ‘To the asylum.’

‘I won’t say that it’s a pleasure, but Gideon didn’t leave me much choice. For some reason your request shot straight to the top of my day’s admittedly short to-do list.’

‘I must have forgotten to tell you that Gideon and I play golf together every Sunday.’

Her gaze tracked from the black bed-hair to the sallow, ravaged face that made Mick Jagger look a picture of clean living, to those disconcerting eyes hiding the sharp, enquiring mind she’d got to know. He had bowed to pressure from above and replaced his beloved black biker jacket with a black suit which hung from his scarecrow frame, only the suit’s drainpipe trousers hinting that he was anything more than a straight-off-the-production-line policeman.

‘Funnily enough, I don’t see you in checked plus-fours.’

He grinned. ‘Masons?’

‘Ditto.

‘Yacht club?’

Jessie rolled her eyes. ‘Shall we get started? I need to be back at Bradley Court by lunchtime. I have work to do. Proper work.’

As they walked side by side down the corridor that cut from A & E to the main hospital, their rubber soles whispering in unison as they gripped and released the lino, Marilyn brought her up to date.

‘We’re not sure how long the baby has been here, but we know that he was left some time before midnight.’

‘Midnight? As in midnight ten hours—’

He held up a hand, cutting her off. ‘Don’t get me started.’

‘He was left by his father?’

‘That’s our working theory. DS Workman and a couple of constables are going through last night’s CCTV footage of the A & E entrance to confirm.’

‘Why would a father abandon his baby?’

‘He abandoned him in a hospital, safe.’

Jessie frowned. ‘A busy A & E department, all sorts coming and going? It’s hardly secure. The fact that the poor kid wasn’t noticed for … what …’ She glanced at her watch, mentally calculating. ‘Seven hours minimum suggests to me that it’s not the first place a caring parent in their right mind would look to deposit their baby for safekeeping.’

‘Right. So the rest of our working theory is that he wasn’t entirely compos mentis at the time.’

Jessie glanced over. ‘Why do you think that?’

They swung left into another corridor, identical to the first. Laying a hand on Jessie’s arm, Marilyn pulled her to a stop outside a door labelled ‘Family Room’. Tilting towards her, he lowered his voice.

‘There’s some history that you need to understand before we meet Granny.’

Jessie caught his tone and raised an eyebrow. ‘And I presume the history is why you wanted me here.’

Marilyn sighed. ‘The history and the story that I suspect may have played itself out last night, and what I fear might be the story going forward.’ He cocked his head towards the family room door. ‘The story that we need to break, as gently as possible, to Granny.’

‘Which is?’

‘The little boy is Harry Lawson. He lives with his father, Malcolm. Malcolm Lawson is also the father of Daniel Lawson.’ He paused. ‘Private Danny Lawson. Ring a bell?’

She shook her head. ‘Should it?’

‘Danny Lawson committed suicide at an Army training base near Camberley a year or so ago. He’d only been in the Army five months. He was sixteen.’

‘I was in Afghanistan with PsyOps around that time. Nothing was on my radar except for that. What happened?’

‘He went AWOL one night while his dorm mates were sleeping. He was found in the showers early the next morning.’

‘And?’

‘And – he had committed suicide.’

‘So you said. How?’

‘The how isn’t important.’

Jessie stared hard at him. ‘If it’s part of the backstory, it is important.’

‘Method isn’t relevant—’

‘Marilyn,’ Jessie cut in.

Marilyn shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. ‘He suffocated himself.’

‘With a pillow?’

‘Tape.’

A shadow crossed Jessie’s face. ‘Tape?’

‘Gaffer tape,’ Marilyn said in a low voice. ‘He wrapped it around his head, covered his mouth and nose with the stuff.’

‘Bloody hell, poor kid,’ she murmured, her eyes sliding from his, finding a crack in the lino at her feet, tracking its rambling progress to the wall, the image that Marilyn’s words had etched into her mind – how desperate sixteen-year-old Danny must have been, to end his life that way – filling her mind with memories. Memories she struggled, at the best of times, to suppress. A little boy hanging by his school tie from a curtain rail, his gorgeous face bloated and purple. This boy, older, but not by so much, making a mask of his face with black gaffer tape. She felt Marilyn’s eyes burning a hole in the top of her skull.

‘He wouldn’t have had unsupervised access to a gun,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘The tape was what he had to hand.’

Biting her lip, Jessie nodded. Gaffer tape – what he had to hand. A school tie and a curtain rail – what Jamie had had to hand.

‘You OK?’ he asked gently.

Looking up, meeting those odd eyes, she forced a smile, sure that it must look twisted and horrible. ‘What, apart from the dodgy hospital smell and the fact that it’s five hundred degrees centigrade in here? Of course, I’m fine.’

She had formed a friendship of sorts with Marilyn since he had pulled her from the freezing sea in Chichester Harbour four months ago; a comfortable relationship that was characterized by his occasional calls for advice when he felt his own force’s psychologist’s recommendations were way off the mark, the odd cheery email to her whilst she was serving on HMS Daring, emails that had transported her straight back from featureless sea to rolling hills with their description of evenings spent drinking Old Speckled Hen in country pubs, sometimes with Captain Ben Callan. But her own history was something that she didn’t choose to share with anyone besides Ahmose and, once only, in a weak moment, with Callan. She wondered if he knew though, anyway. If Callan had told him. She suspected, from Marilyn’s unease, that he had.

‘So what was Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes’ involvement if Danny Lawson was Army?’ she asked, breaking the laden silence.

‘The Military Police conducted the initial investigation and came to the conclusion that Danny’s death was suicide. But Danny’s dad, Malcolm, refused to accept the verdict. He wrote to his MP, the Defence Secretary, the Armed Forces Minister, even the bloody Prime Minister, anyone and everyone he could think of, calling for the investigation to be reopened by the civvy police. Police without prejudice, I remember he called it. He claimed that the Redcaps were covering up murder. That the Army had so many problems dealing with the Middle East that they didn’t want to admit kids were being murdered on their home turf. I got a call from the Surrey County Coroner telling me that we were to do another investigation.’

‘And?’

Marilyn sighed and shrugged. ‘We reviewed all the evidence and found the same. Suicide.’

‘Cut and dried.’

‘Cut and dried. There was no evidence to suggest murder – and I promise you, I did look for it.’

‘But Malcolm didn’t accept your findings either,’ Jessie murmured.

‘No. No, he didn’t.’ His voice slipped to a monotone. ‘He kept on and on and on. Wrote back to the same cast of politicians, wrote to all the papers, tried to whip up a media storm, but there was nothing there, no story, so none of them bit.’

‘Why was he so determined?’

‘I don’t know. I just remember how mad he was with grief. Grief and anger. I was surprised that he was so damn angry. Grief, I expected, sadness, loss, guilt even, but not anger.’

Jessie was looking at the floor, her arms folded across her chest, defensive body language, she recognized, but too tense to unwrap. ‘Anger is often the go-to emotion that masks others. Sadness, grief, loss – they can all morph into anger, particularly if they’re mixed with frustration or perceived helplessness. It’s hard for family members to accept … suicide.’ She swallowed, eased the word out around the wad that had formed in her throat. ‘Because where there’s suicide, there is a deep, debilitating hopelessness that the victim can’t see a way around. The family often blame themselves because they didn’t notice, or didn’t realize the depth of despair. Guilt, blame, self-recrimination, self-blame – they can eat you up. It’s always easier to look somewhere else to lay that blame.’ She glanced up, met Marilyn’s gaze for a fraction of a second, couldn’t hold it. ‘Children shouldn’t die before their parents,’ she murmured, tracing the meandering crack in the grey lino with the toe of her ballet pump. ‘It flips the law of nature on its head. A parent is programmed to protect their child at all costs, to do anything to keep that child safe, however old the child is.’

A child. A son. Committing suicide.

Jessie had held on to her own grief, dealing with the pain the only way a fourteen-year-old knew: internalizing it, taking the blame for her brother’s suicide squarely on her own shoulders. She had the psychological scars to prove it. Danny Lawson’s father sounded to have done the opposite and looked for someone else to blame. Anyone else to blame. Either way, she knew exactly what he had been going through.

She felt the weight of Marilyn’s hand on her arm. ‘We should go in now, Jessie.’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

9

Slipping on his Oakley’s, Callan walked slowly, collecting his thoughts with each step following the line of Blackdown’s chain-link, razor-wire-topped boundary fence, towards the thick wooded area where he could see Lieutenant Ed Gold and the scenes of crime boys.

Although he was still two hundred metres away, Callan could see the arrogant rigidity of Gold’s stance, recognize the disproportionate command in the staccato arcs of his gestures, hear each word of his barked orders clear as a bell. Gold was in his element, enjoying the control, even though the scenes of crime technicians were consummate professionals who needed no guidance. Callan would take pleasure in rescuing them, bursting Gold’s bubble.

Callan glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past ten. He was late to the scene, very late. He had received the call notifying him of a suspicious death at Blackdown training base sixty minutes ago, while he’d been sitting in his neurologist’s office, digesting bad news. He only hoped that Gold hadn’t fucked up the crime scene already, though the presence of Sergeant Glyn Morgan, his lead SOCO, a forest ghoul moving silently through the trees in his white overalls, gave him a modicum of confidence that some integrity may have been preserved.

Gold glanced over, caught sight of Callan and the next order died on his lips.

‘What have we got, Gold?’ Callan asked as he reached him.

‘A dead soldier,’ Gold muttered, his navy-flecked, royal-blue gaze meeting Callan’s insouciantly. A beat later, he added a reluctant ‘sir’ and followed it with a disinclined salute.

Callan returned the salute smartly, though he was more tempted to use his right hand to smack Gold around the head. He knew that it would take all his willpower not to wring the jumped-up little shit’s neck on this case, suspected that Colonel Holden-Hough, Officer Commanding Southern Region, Special Investigation Branch, knew the same, which is why he had been given Gold as his detachment second-in-command in the first place.

‘Who?’ Callan snapped.

‘A trainee, Stephen Foster.’ Gold flipped open his notebook. ‘Aged sixteen.’

‘What was he doing out here?’

‘Guard duty.’

‘Alone?’

Gold shook his head. ‘With a female. Martha Wonsag.’

‘So where the hell was she when he died?’

Gold shrugged. ‘I haven’t got that far yet, sir.’

‘Where is the rest of the guard detachment?’

‘They’re back on normal duties.’ He held up the notebook. ‘I have their names.’

‘What?’ Callan stared at him, incredulous. ‘This is most likely a murder inquiry and the victim’s guard detachment will be top of our list of suspects. Secure a suite of rooms and get the guard rounded up and isolated now. Do not leave them alone for a second, and do not let them talk to each other. I’ll start interviews when I’ve looked at the crime scene.’

His jaw tight with anger, Gold nodded. ‘Right, sir.’

Turning away, feeling the heat of Gold’s fury burning into his back, biting down on his own anger – anger at himself for having been unavailable when the call about a suspicious death came through, at Gold for his incompetence, knowing that a significant part of his anger was fuelled by dislike – Callan climbed into a set of overalls and ducked under the crime scene cordon. Morgan’s SOCOs fell silent as he approached, and he knew what they were thinking. He was famous, or more accurately infamous, in the Special Investigation Branch. Only thirty, eight years in, and he had already taken two bullets whilst on duty. The first a gift from the Taliban eighteen months ago in Afghanistan, still lodged in his brain; the fallout, permanent seizures, manageable at the moment with drugs, his neurologist had told him this morning, but likely to worsen with time. The second, a bullet in the abdomen from a fellow soldier four months ago, in woods not unlike these. He’d only been back on duty for two weeks. He knew that he was well respected in the Branch for being brave and professional, and found it unnerving. How opinions would change if his colleagues found out about his epilepsy and the demons that infested his mind at night. What he was feeling now, walking into this dense, shadowy copse of trees. Déjà vu.

‘Sir.’ Morgan straightened as Callan reached him. At five foot eight the top of his head barely grazed Callan’s shoulder.

‘I’m glad you’re here, Morgan.’

‘I’m glad you’re here, too, Captain.’ A gentle Welsh valleys accent, unmellowed by his decades-long absence from the Rhondda. He was the son of a coal miner, had faced only three life choices: unemployment, life down a pit, or the Army. He had chosen the Army and escape and was a career soldier, experienced and capable, with a degree of cynicism gained over twenty-five years in the Redcaps, that meant he was no longer surprised by any crime that the dark side of human nature could conjure up. ‘My patience was wearing thin with Little Lord Fauntleroy over there.’

With his stocky frame, steel-grey hair and clipped moustache, he reminded Callan of a solid grey pit pony.

‘May I take the liberty of saying that you look like shit, sir,’ Morgan continued. ‘Big night?’

‘Thanks for your honesty, Sergeant. I feel like shit too.’ Scratching a hand through his dirty blond stubble, he stifled a yawn. Branch detectives wore plain clothes most of the time and though he had changed out of his muddy shirt and jeans into a navy-blue suit he kept in the boot of his car for emergencies, he hadn’t been able to do anything about his pasty complexion or his bloodshot eyes.

‘Well, you’re going to need a strong stomach for this one.’

Callan looked where Morgan indicated, taking in the salient details quickly, freeze-framing each segment of the tableau in turn, acclimatizing himself mental snapshot by mental snapshot. In a few moments, he knew that he would have to pick over the scene, the corpse of the kid in forensic detail with Morgan and he wasn’t sure that his mind or his stomach were up to it.

‘He hasn’t been moved?’

Morgan raised an eyebrow.

‘Sorry. Stupid question.’ Callan squatted, taking care not to step too close to avoid contaminating the scene. He could feel his heart beginning to race, took a couple of deep breaths to slow it. The boy was slumped at the foot of a huge oak tree, tilted sideways, like a rag doll that had been propped in place, then slid off centre. His head was lolling on to his chest, dark brown eyes open, staring, and already showing the milky film of death, the tree’s leaves making a dappled jigsaw of his bloodless face. He had been handsome in life, and young – fuck, he was young. He looked like a fresh-faced schoolboy who’d been playing soldiers – you play dead now – except that this victim wasn’t the product of any game. The bloody puncture wound in his throat and the tacky claret bib coating the front of his combat jacket told Callan that this crime scene was all too real.

‘Stab wound to the throat?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Weapon?’

‘A screwdriver.’

‘Where is it?’

‘I’ve bagged it.’

‘Was it still in his throat?’

‘No, it was eight metres away. Here.’ He indicated one of the numbered markers. ‘The tip was dug into the ground, the handle sticking up at forty-five degrees.’

‘Thrown?’

Morgan nodded. ‘Without doubt.’

Shifting closer, Callan studied the stab wound in the boy’s throat.

‘It doesn’t appear to be a vicious blow,’ he heard Morgan say.

‘No.’

There didn’t appear to be any trauma around the wound, no damaged skin or bruising. It was as if the screwdriver had slid in gently, finding the pliable gap between two cartilaginous ridges in the trachea, nothing unduly violent, no loss of control or wild ferocity about this death. Even the expression on the kid’s face showed no fear, merely an odd, chilling sense of calm.

A camera’s flash and Callan straightened, shielding his eyes from the blinding white light. The last thing he needed was another epileptic fit.

‘You OK, sir?’

‘Sure. I just need a coffee and ten hours’ sleep. I’ll leave you to it, Morgan.’

He suddenly wanted out of this wood. There was something about the denseness of the trees, the constant shifting of shadows as the wind moved the branches, and the smell – damp bark and leaf mulch – that catapulted him back to Sandhurst, back to that night in the woods when Major Nicholas Scott, the father of Jessie Flynn’s deeply traumatized four-year-old patient, Sami, had shot him in the back, when he had nearly died for the second time in his life. Jesus, Ben – he took a breath, trying to ease the pressure in his chest – focus on the fucking case. Stephen Foster, a sixteen-year-old kid, five months in the Army and already dead. There’d be hell to pay for this one.

10

The room Jessie and Marilyn entered was small and airless. Scuffed baby-pink walls, a burgundy cotton sofa backed against one wall, two matching chairs facing it, a brightly coloured foam alphabet jigsaw mat laid in the middle of the vinyl floor, each letter fashioned from an animal contorting itself into the appropriate shape – an ape for ‘A’, a beetle for ‘B’, a cat for ‘C’. The air stiflingly hot, even though someone had made an effort to ease the pressure-cooker atmosphere by opening the window as far as its ‘safety-first’ mechanism would allow. A fly, seeking escape, circled by the window, cracking its fragile carapace against the glass with each turn.

A chubby, blond-haired baby boy in a white T-shirt and pale blue dungarees was sitting in the middle of the mat, smacking the handset of a Bob the Builder telephone against its base. An elderly lady – late seventies, Jessie guessed – tiny and reed thin, was perched on the edge of the sofa watching the baby. Her hands, clamped on her knees, were threaded with thick blue veins, her skin diaphanous and liver-spotted with age. She had dressed for a formal occasion in a grey woollen tweed skirt, grey tights and a smart white shirt, the shirt’s short sleeves her only visible concession to the day’s unforeseen heat. Her brown lace-ups were highly polished, but the stitching had unravelled from the inside sole of one, the sole cleaving away from its upper.

Starting at the sound of the door, she looked over, her face lighting briefly with a sentiment that Jessie recognized as hope, half rising to her feet before collapsing back, the light dimming, when she realized that it was no one she knew.

‘Mrs Lawson, I’m Detective Inspector Bobby Simmons and this is my colleague, Doctor Jessica Flynn.’

From beneath her silver hair, the old lady’s dull gaze moved from Marilyn to Jessie and back. She made no move to take Marilyn’s outstretched hand.

‘Have you found Malcolm?’

‘Not yet, Mrs Lawson. We need some details from you to help in our search.’

She nodded, murmured, ‘Of course. Whatever you need.’

While Jessie sat down in one of the chairs opposite the sofa, Marilyn moved to stand by the window, reaching behind him to give it a quick upwards heave to see if it would budge, which it didn’t. Clearing his throat, he glanced down at the notes written in the notebook that DS Workman had thrust into his hand a few moments before Jessie had arrived at the hospital.

‘Malcolm’s car? He drives a dark grey Toyota Corolla, registration number LP 52 YBB? Is that correct?’

Mrs Lawson’s gaze found the ceiling as she tried to summon a picture to mind. ‘The colour is right, yes, and the make. I’m pretty sure that the make is right.’ She paused. ‘The registration number … I’m sorry, but would you repeat it.’