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

‘Does your mother still live in Birmingham?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you close to her?’

The first sign of warmth and light that Jessie had seen in his soft hazel eyes, but the words thrown out insouciantly, entirely at odds with his expression. ‘What’s that got to do with you?’

She felt as if she was butting her head up against a wall. A smooth, featureless, wall, plain white, no finger-holds, nothing to get a grip on. Her office felt oppressive suddenly, a room shut up for too long over winter, which it had been. The shower had passed, sunlight breaking through the bank of grey clouds outside. Standing, Jessie unlocked the window and hauled up the lower sash. Cool, damp air eddied through the gap.

‘Can I go now?’ Ryan asked, narrowing his gaze against the sunlight.

‘Not yet.’

‘Why not?’ he hissed.

The sudden flare of aggression surprised Jessie, gone almost as soon as she’d registered it. He had seemed too distant, too closed down for aggression. She made a mental note.

‘Don’t I get a choice?’ he finished.

‘Unfortunately you gave up your right to choose when you joined the Army.’

His mouth tightened as if she had unwittingly put her finger on a nerve.

‘Ryan, Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace, referred you to the Defence Psychology Service. As you can see, there’s not much information in your file.’ She held up the single page. ‘So why don’t you tell me why you think he sent you.’

Jaw muscles clenched under his skin.

‘I’ve never even talked to him.’ He stretched his arm straight above his head. ‘He’s God isn’t he? And I’m down here somewhere.’ The hand moved to graze the carpet. ‘Pond life.’

If he’d had no verbal contact with Wallace, had he talked to someone else about his feelings, or had his behaviour been noticed? ‘Did you talk to someone else at Blackdown about how you’re feeling?’

‘I’m not feeling anything.’

‘There must be a reason that you’re here, that you were referred.’

Ryan’s arms tightened around his torso, but he didn’t reply. Everything about his posture telegraphed intense feelings of discomfort at Jessie’s questions.

‘Who did you talk to, Ryan?’

‘No one.’ His gaze found the window. Jessie let him stare. After a moment, his gaze still fixed on the outside, he murmured, ‘He approached me.’

‘Who approached you?’

‘The chaplain.’

That wasn’t in the file. She made a mental note.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said that it’s his job.’

‘To keep an eye on new recruits?’

‘Yeah. Their spiritual health, mental health, all that crap.’

‘What did you talk to him about?’

Another shrug. ‘Stuff.’

‘Can you tell me?’

He shook his head. ‘They’re supposed to be confidential, aren’t they? My discussions with him? I should have known not to talk to him.’ Ryan slumped in the bucket chair, started kicking at the carpet with one of his combat boots, muttered under his breath. ‘Fuckin’ kiddie fiddler.’

Catholic. Kiddie fiddler. The chaplain must get that all the time – an occupational hazard. Jessie continued to look at Ryan, but he didn’t add anything else. She waited, the silence growing heavier.

‘Do you believe in God, Doctor Flynn?’ he asked suddenly.

Jessie took a beat before answering. She had been raised a Catholic, sent to a convent school, but she had never seen any evidence that the people around her lived by God’s word. Had seen no evidence at all of the existence of a just and gentle God. The only God she had experienced persecuted and destroyed.

And God will use this persecution to show his justice and to make you worthy of his kingdom, for which you are suffering.

Persecution without justice.

‘No, Ryan, I don’t believe in God.’

Ryan looked up and their gazes met for a fraction of a second before he looked away again. Minute progress, but progress all the same.

‘My mum spent time in a mental home, you know, when I was younger. Perhaps madness runs in the family.’

‘No one is saying that you’re mad.’

‘But it does run in families, doesn’t it?’ he murmured. ‘Madness?’

‘There is no such thing as madness,’ Jessie said quietly, her gaze finding the window. ‘There are disorders, some caused by physical factors, chemical imbalances in people’s brains, some caused by psychological factors, such as bad experiences in childhood.’ She fought to keep her voice even, feeling the tension rise, the electric suit tingle against her skin. Madness. ‘They can all be treated, but the patient needs to be willing.’

She thought that Ryan would have switched off, be picking at his beret or kicking at the carpet again, but when she looked back from the window, she saw that he was watching her intently.

‘Well, perhaps I am.’

‘Willing?’

‘Mad.’

‘Perhaps we all are.’ Jessie smiled, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. ‘We’re all individuals, Ryan. Don’t feel that you need to be the same as the others to fit in.’

A chill shook Jessie as she closed the door behind Ryan, and she realized that the window was still open. The cloud canopy was back, draping itself over Bradley Court, the leaves on the copper beeches outside lifting and twisting in the wind, rain speckling through the open window. Hauling down the sash, she stood looking out, awed by the ability of the weather to change so suddenly from darkness to light and back to darkness again.

What had she been doing when she was Ryan’s age? She would have been back at school then, trying to get a grip on normality, work for her GCSEs, make up for the time that she had missed, prove to herself – to them – that she could, would, carve a normal life for herself. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head and rested it against the cool glass. The hiss and snap of the electric suit was intensifying with the memories.

She could feel the box of matches in her shaking hand, the rough strip on the side as her fingers felt to slide it open in the dark. It was important that she was quiet, vital that she didn’t wake them. She just needed to show them. Show her.

Her eyes snapped open. The electric suit was tight around her throat.

She had been fourteen, younger even than Ryan. Old enough to face the consequences though. Old enough to pay.

14

Callan found Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace, in his office. He was in his fifties, a large man, square and solid, both facially and in his build, running to fat around the middle, as were many men of his age, used to spending too much time behind a desk.

‘Come in, Captain Callan. You’re the Senior Investigating Officer on this case?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So where have we got to?’ A clipped, public school accent, the tone controlled but commanding.

‘It’s early days, sir. The autopsy is booked for tomorrow morning, so we should have confirmed cause of death by end of day tomorrow.’ Callan tried to catch his eye, to form the crucial first impression of the man who would, no doubt, be breathing down his neck until the investigation was concluded. But sunlight was cutting obliquely through the window to Wallace’s right, lighting his face, masking his eyes behind the reflection in his frameless square spectacle lenses. ‘But I suspect it’s murder.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of the nature of the victim’s injuries. A throat wound. It couldn’t have been accidental and it’s a …’ he paused, searching for the right word ‘… brave way to commit suicide. And also the weapon that was used was found eight metres from his body, the tip stabbed into the ground, at an angle. Thrown, my CSI sergeant said. Long way to throw it when you’re bleeding from a throat wound.’

Sighing, Wallace dipped his head and rubbed his hands over his bald scalp, the sound of his palms grating through the sparse grey stubble, sandpaper on wood.

‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you how sensitive this death will be. Sixteen-year-old, five months in.’

There was a brusqueness to Wallace’s tone that Callan was well used to: men who were accustomed, over years, to silence and assent. Not conditions that Callan reacted well to, despite his chosen profession. This case was Military Police jurisdiction, but Wallace was commanding officer at Blackdown, and although far above the victim in the Army hierarchy, he was still Foster’s direct superior, which gave him an unalienable right to be informed, involved, omnipresent.

‘We need to get this sorted quickly, Captain.’

‘That is my intention.’

‘Keep a lid on the negative publicity.’ Wallace cleared his throat. ‘Can you do that for me?’

‘That’s not my first priority, sir.’

The sun must have gone behind a cloud, because he met Wallace’s gaze behind his glasses now. His eyes were light grey and shone with an intense, uncompromising gleam.

‘Nevertheless, it is an important one.’ Wallace’s eyes narrowed. ‘Discretion is the better part of valour, as they say. I’ve heard that you know all about valour.’ His gaze found the scar on Callan’s temple. ‘But discretion …?’ He let the sentence hang.

‘I have no intention of speaking to the press,’ Callan replied. ‘And I will ensure that none of my team do either.’

‘That was all I wanted to hear.’

A knock on the door. Wallace frowned. ‘Yes?’

The door inched open and Lieutenant Gold stuck his head through the gap. His eyes flitted from Callan to Wallace and back to Callan.

‘The guard are isolated and ready to be interviewed, Captain,’ he said.

‘Come on in, Gold,’ Wallace barked.

‘I need to get back, sir.’ Gold addressed his comment to Callan.

‘You’ve left someone guarding the interviewees?’ Callan asked.

‘Sergeant Kiddie.’

‘Fine. So come in.’

Fingering the knot of his tie, the yellow-haired lieutenant stepped over the threshold. He came to attention facing Colonel Wallace, a salute that Wallace waved away.

‘No need for that.’ Wallace came out from behind his desk and laid a light hand on Gold’s shoulder. ‘So you’re working on this case too? I didn’t realize.’

Taking a step back, Gold disengaged his shoulder. ‘Yes, sir.’ His gaze swung away from Wallace’s and Callan noticed a muscle above his eye twitch.

‘Well, I’m pleased to hear that,’ Wallace said gruffly, his face creasing into a frown, the expression at odds with his words. He glanced over to Callan. ‘You may have heard that we share a relative.’

Callan gave a non-committal half-nod. He hadn’t heard and the information was irrelevant to him. He wouldn’t view or treat Gold any differently because of it.

Leaning back against his desk, legs crossed at the ankle, Wallace slid his hands into his pockets. ‘So how are you finding the Special Investigation Branch, Gold?’

Gold’s slender fingers moved to smooth the collar of his shirt, a collar that was already starched and ironed within an inch of its life.

‘Good, sir, I’m enjoying it. I’m enjoying the autonomy, the freedom.’ His voice was too loud for the small office, as if he was struggling to pitch his volume at the correct level.

Callan, leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, watching intently, realized with surprise that Gold was tense, stressed. There was a prickliness, an antagonism to the atmosphere in the room that hadn’t been present earlier, when it was him and Wallace.

‘Yes, I’m sure that the Branch is an interesting place to be,’ Wallace said. ‘Make the most of it, eh. Spend as much time as you can with Captain Callan here. Learn from him.’

A brief nod and Gold’s eyes swivelled to meet Callan’s. ‘If there’s nothing else, I’ll get back to the interviewees.’

Callan glanced at Wallace before replying, but Wallace wasn’t looking at him. He was gazing down at the carpet, his face creased again into that frown.

‘Yes, you go. I’ll join you in a minute.’

Turning, Gold left the room without another word.

Callan straightened. ‘If that’s all, Colonel, I’ll get back too.’

Tugging his glasses off, Wallace massaged the bridge of his nose with two blunt fingers and sighed irritably. ‘Make sure that you involve Gold in every aspect of the case. Keep an eye on him for me, will you? It’s important to pass on your expertise to junior officers and Gold is bright and talented.’

The request was no doubt motivated by family connection, perhaps a favour Wallace owed to that relative he had mentioned, and the entreaty needled Callan. He hailed from a long line of factory workers, was the first in his family not to have ended up on the shop floor purely because politicians hadn’t yet got around to closing the local grammar school and he’d been smart enough to win a place. His father had died fourteen years ago; his mother lived in a modern terraced house in a secure gated development in a nice part of Aldershot that he paid for. He had made his own way in the world from the age of sixteen, reviled others who hadn’t done the same, some of that feeling motivated, he recognized, by envy.

‘Yes, sir,’ he muttered, making his way to the door. Jesus. This investigation was going from bad to worse and it had hardly begun.

15

Marilyn stared at the snowstorm on the screen in front of him.

‘Is this mid-winter in Alaska?’

Workman sighed. ‘Old CCTV, sir.’

Tipping back on his heels, Marilyn blew air through his nose. ‘You can say that again.’ His gaze moved from the screen that covered the A & E reception desk, entrance hallway and sliding doors to the outside, roamed across the other screens in the bank of monitors, five screens wide, four high, twenty in all, each relaying a fragment of hospital turf, the top right-hand monitor blank, the camera feeding it presumably broken, searching for a good view of the service road outside Accident and Emergency. He couldn’t see one. ‘What about the camera outside, covering the service road?’

‘Vandalized last week,’ Workman said.

Ka-ching. One chance in twenty and he’d hit the jackpot. ‘Great. So this is it. This is all we have to go on.’

‘It’s not their priority, sir.’

‘No, don’t tell me. Failing to notice babies and telling middle-aged men who are beyond help to give up smoking is, though,’ he snapped, ignoring the sideways glance that the hospital security guard shot him.

Pulling his reading glasses from his pocket – a purchase he’d been forced to make last month when he’d found that his arms no longer extended far enough to hold his newspaper at a distance whereby he could read the text – Marilyn sat down and slid the chair, on its squeaky plastic wheels, closer to the screen.

‘Play that segment again, please,’ he said to the security guard.

‘The bit where the man comes in pushing the baby?’ the guard asked.

‘Yes.’

Fuzz on the screen while the segment was rewound. Then an empty A & E foyer, the sliding doors closed, dark outside their glass panes. Suddenly the doors slid open. A pram appeared on the screen and right behind, the man pushing it, visible only from mid-chest down.

‘He’s carrying an umbrella,’ Marilyn said.

‘Which makes sense, considering it was pouring,’ Workman murmured.

Marilyn nodded, focusing on the screen. ‘Dark jumper, dark trousers, dark coat, sensible shoes.’

‘Sensible shoes?’

‘Pause, please.’

The grainy image froze. Marilyn pressed his finger to the screen.

‘Clodhoppers.’

The shoes were thick-soled, the type of shoes that would be sold at Clarks as ‘built for walking’.

‘Malcolm Lawson was certainly the sensible-shoe type,’ Workman said.

‘He was that.’

‘It could be him,’ she said.

‘It could be me.’

‘You don’t wear sensible shoes, sir,’ Workman said, glancing down at his £300 Edward Hill pebble-grain leather brogues.

Fair point.

Marilyn turned to the guard. ‘Play it until the man leaves the hospital, disappears from view, but the sliding doors are still open. Pause with the doors open, please.’

The guard’s eyebrows rose in query.

‘The background. He could have driven to the door.’

‘Not allowed.’

‘Midnight? In the rain? Who’s out there objecting?’

They waited while the man dressed in dark clothing parked the pram, stooping to take one last long look at baby Harry before he straightened, turned and exited the building, walking right, diagonally across the service road, out of shot.

‘Now,’ Marilyn said.

The screen froze, sliding doors still open, revealing the service road beyond, the darkness illuminated by the circular misty disc of an overhead streetlamp. Marilyn pressed his finger to the far left-hand side of the screen.

‘This? What’s this?’

‘The front of an ambulance,’ the guard said. ‘The bumper, a bit of the grille and bonnet.’

‘You sure?’

‘Absolutely. I’ve worked here for twenty years. Seen enough of those in my time to recognize one from a square inch.’

‘OK,’ Marilyn said. ‘Fine.’ He could tell that the security guard was a pedant. A twenty-years-in-the-job pedant; good enough for him. ‘So that’s an ambulance.’

His gaze tracked right, across the bottom of the screen, up an inch, left, the CCTV equivalent of a fingertip search in mud. Double yellow lines, showing muted white on the black-and-white screen. Something bright white, inflated – a plastic bag? At the top of the screen, two wheels, separated by a pale, blotchy – most probably, dirty white – stripe of metal, a horizontal row of alternate dark and light-coloured blocks above.

‘The lower half of a police car, sir,’ Workman cut in.

Marilyn tilted forward, squinting through his glasses, picking out every detail. The vehicle was parked on the other side of the service road, half its wheels, a segment of chassis, the stripes and the blocks – navy blue and fluorescent yellow in real life – showing gunmetal grey and luminous white on the screen.

‘Yes, you’re right. It’s a police car.’

He glanced over at the security guard, who concurred.

One ambulance, one police car: nothing unusual in either of those being parked on a hospital service road. Nothing else visible. No leads. No breaks. No bloody luck.

Tugging off his glasses, sliding them back into his pocket before Workman had time to comment on his new-found old man accoutrements, he leaned back in the chair and stretched his arms above his head. Focusing so hard on the screen had left his eyes feeling as if someone had tugged them five centimetres from his face on their optic nerves and then pinged them back into their sockets.

‘So it could very possibly have been Malcolm Lawson who dropped the baby off,’ he said.

Workman and the security guard both nodded.

‘He was tender with Harry,’ Workman said. ‘He stopped to take a last look. A long look.’

Marilyn sighed. ‘He did. He did indeed.’

His mood hadn’t improved. He felt as if he’d spent the whole morning running in circles, chasing his tail. He had snuck out of the hospital a couple of times to join the unwashed throng outside for a sneaky cigarette, hoping, ridiculously, that Janet, that dumpy receptionist, wouldn’t catch him in the act. Lord knows why her opinion mattered to him, but for some reason he felt strongly that he needed to prove her wrong. Prove to her that he could take control of his health, even if he was delaying the attempt until tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. Every traffic cop and patrol car in Surrey and Sussex had been told to keep an eye out as a priority, but as yet there had been no sighting of Malcolm Lawson’s car. DS Workman had already been telephoned three times by Granny Lawson for updates, even though she’d only left the hospital two hours ago, each call progressively more tearful. He hadn’t given the old biddy his mobile number, small mercies.

‘Get a copy of the original film to the tech boys, DS Workman, see if they can clean it up.’

‘That’ll take two or three days, sir.’

Pushing himself to his feet, he threw her a withering look. ‘Better get on with it then.’

16

She obviously hadn’t turned James Blunt up loud enough, because she heard her phone on the first ring, caught its jittering progress across the smooth black leather of her passenger seat out of the corner of her eye. Easing her foot on to the brake, pulling her Mini to the side of the lane until the dogwood hedge fingered her passenger window, Jessie reached over, checked the name flashing on the phone’s face.

Gideon Duursema.

She was tempted to toss it back on the seat, wind down the windows and turn up the volume, step on the accelerator, plead ignorance to her boss in the morning. But she couldn’t start off on the wrong foot with him so soon after her return. She was good at her job, intuitive and dedicated – most of the time – so he cut her slack, but even he had limits.

‘Gideon.’

‘Jessie.’

Silence, which she let hang.

‘How was DI Simmons?’

A diversionary tactic, from his tone.

‘Rough, as always.’

‘How was the baby?’

‘Small. Fat. Baby-like.’

His deep laugh echoed down the line. ‘So maternal.’

‘Well, at least you’re not going to have to worry about me getting knocked up and taking months off work.’

‘Small mercies, Doctor Flynn.’

Doctor Flynn. Ominous. Echoes of the occasions when her mother called for ‘Jessica’, as a child. Nothing good ever came out of those occasions.

‘You’re on your way home, I presume?’

‘Yes,’ she replied in a cautious voice.

‘Then, I’m sorry.’

‘You’re apologizing before you’ve even asked me to do anything. Now that really makes me nervous.’

‘You weren’t also feeling tired were you? Jet-lagged?’

Jessie glanced quickly at the washed-out oval segment of her face in the rear-view mirror. ‘Knackered. Why?’

‘I’ve had another request.’

‘Don’t tell me. From your dry cleaner. Your suit is ready for collection. Of course, yes, no problem, give me the address.’

Another laugh, this one a cynical bark, cut off before it was finished. ‘I was hoping that your stint on a boat might have made you more respectful of authority, but I seem to be sadly deluded.’

‘Type 45 Destroyer.’

She heard his exasperated sigh down the phone, remained stubbornly silent.

‘There’s been a suspicious death at Blackdown. Early this morning. A sixteen-year-old.’

‘Sounds like a PR disaster in the making.’

Headlights suddenly, even though it was still daylight, high up, lighting the interior of her Mini operating-theatre bright. She held her breath, hoping her Mini was doing the same, while a huge metallic black Range Rover Sport squeezed past on the narrow lane, the woman driving, a slim blonde, mobile clamped to her ear, the nose of a chubby-faced, blonde toddler pressed to the back window, her breath clouding the glass.

‘So the Branch need to clear this one up quickly before the press get hold of it and turn it into a public relations nightmare for the Army. Holden-Hough has requested our help.’