Dead Eyed

DCI Michael Lambert thought he’d closed his last case…

Yet when he’s passed a file detailing a particularly gruesome murder, Michael knows that this is no ordinary killer at work.

The removal of the victim’s eyes and the Latin inscription carved into the chest is the chilling calling-card of the ‘Souljacker’: a cold-blooded murderer who struck close to Michael once before, years ago.

Now the long-buried case is being reopened, and Michael is determined to use his inside knowledge to finally bring the killer to justice. But as the body count rises, Michael realises that his own links to the victims could mean that he is next on the killer’s list…

Dead Eyed

Matt Brolly

Copyright

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2015

Copyright © Matt Brolly 2015

Matt Brolly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

E-book Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9781474045032

Version date: 2018-09-20

Following his law degree where he developed an interest in criminal law, MATT BROLLY completed his Masters in Creative Writing at Glasgow University. He reads widely across all genres, and is currently working on the second in his Michael Lambert thriller series. Matt lives in London with his wife and their two young children. You can find out more about Matt at his website MattBrolly.co.uk or by following him on twitter: @MatthewBrolly

I’d like to thank a number of people who have helped, directly or indirectly in the writing of this book:

The whole team at HQ Digital for their support and encouragement, with special thanks to Clio Cornish for signing me.

My wonderful Editor, Charlotte Mursell, for her insightful comments and for pushing me to make this the best book it could be.

The Creative Writing team at Glasgow University. In particular, Zoe Strachan and Elizabeth Reeder for their great advice.

On a personal note, I’d like to thank my Mum and Dad, Carla and Joe, for their support and patience in waiting for my first book to be published.

Michael Brolly, for lending his first name.

My family and friends for being there over the years: Eileen Burnell, Claire and the Webbers, Mel and the Brollys, Ann and Jim Eardley, Beth and Warren Eardley, Alan, Ishy, Holly, Chris, Dan, Frank, Matt Lower, Ralph, Ryan, Simon, Alexia, Lizzie, Snuffy Walden, Elvis, Broll, Broll Junior, Dave the Dog, and many others who have made an impact on my life.

My children, Freya and Hamish, whose love is my greatest inspiration.

And Alison, my first reader and fiercest critic, for her unwavering belief and love.

For Alison

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Title Page

Copyright

Author Bio

Acknowledgement

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Epilogue

Endpages

About the Publisher

Prologue

The man hovered on the edge of the dance floor. His elongated limbs and thinning hair made him stand out from the young lithe bodies. Sam Burnham watched him from the bar, nursing the same brandy he’d ordered an hour ago.

The track ended and the man shuffled his feet. He scanned the mirrored dance area before heading towards the bar.

Burnham ordered a second drink. He sensed the man in his periphery, and turned to face him. He placed his hand on the younger man’s arm, and looked him directly in the eyes.

‘Can I buy you a drink?’ he asked.

The man nodded, staring at Burnham. Twenty minutes later they left the club together.

‘What now?’ asked Burnham, pulling his jacket tight against his body. It was a late September evening in Bristol, and the temperature had dropped since he’d set out earlier that day.

‘Where are you staying?’ asked the man. His eyes darted in random directions, not once focusing on Burnham.

‘Hotel. You wouldn’t like it. Do you live near?’ Burnham knew exactly where he lived.

‘I’m not sure,’ said the man. ‘I don’t know you.’

Burnham touched the man’s arm again. It was the simplest of techniques, but highly effective.

The man relented. ‘It’s not far away. We can walk.’

The man lived in Southville, a small suburb of Bristol less than a mile from the centre. They walked in an awkward silence, peppered with the occasional question from the man.

The man stopped outside a block of flats. ‘I don’t mean to sound weird, but do I know you from somewhere?’

‘I don’t think so. I guess I must have one of those faces,’ said Burnham, following him inside.

The flat was hospital clean, the air fragranced artificially. The living area was an array of various gleaming surfaces: glass, chrome, marble. Burnham accepted a glass of brandy. The man’s hands trembled as he handed it over.

They moved to the living room sofa and the man made life easy for him. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he said, his voice faltering.

As soon as Burnham heard the bathroom door click shut, he removed the phial from his inside jacket pocket. He broke the seal and spilled the clear liquid into the man’s drink, stirring it with his left index finger.

It took five minutes for the man to take a drink. A further five minutes for the drug to take effect. Burnham dragged him to the bedroom, the man’s skeletal body insubstantial in his thick arms. He placed the man on the bed and made a phone call.

Burnham’s boss arrived at the flat two minutes later carrying a small leather case. Burnham watched in silence as he removed a surgical outfit, a set of scalpels, and a second phial filled with a different substance. ‘Wait in the car,’ he ordered.

It was three hours before his boss left the building. Burnham hurried from his seat and opened the back passenger door for him.

‘Do you need me to clean up?’ he asked.

‘No, not this time.’

Chapter 1

Michael Lambert waited at the back of the coffee shop. To his right, a group of new mothers congregated around three wooden tables. Some held their tiny offspring; the others allowed their babies to sleep in the oversized prams which crowded the area. Two tables down, a pair of men dressed in identical suits stared at their iPads. Next to them, a young woman with braided hair read a paperback novel. All of them looked up as Simon Klatzky walked through the shop entrance and shouted over at him.

Lambert ignored the glances. He’d arrived thirty minutes earlier, out of habit checking and rechecking the clientele. He hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. He stood and beckoned Klatzky over. He’d last seen him two years ago at the funeral. ‘Good to see you again, Simon,’ he said.

‘Mikey,’ said Klatzky. Like Lambert, Klatzky was thirty-eight. He’d lost weight since the last time they’d met. His face was gaunt, his eyeballs laced with thin shards of red. When he spoke, Lambert noticed a number of missing teeth. The rest were discoloured and black with cheap fillings. His face cracked into a smile. He stood grinning at Lambert. In his left hand he clutched an A4 manila envelope.

‘Sit down then. What do you want to drink?’ said Lambert.

Klatzky shrugged. ‘Coffee?’

Lambert ordered two black Americanos and returned to the table.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Klatzky.

Klatzky had called earlier that morning desperate to meet. He’d refused to tell Lambert the details over the phone but had insisted that it was urgent. From the smell of him, it hadn’t been important enough to stop him visiting a bar first.

Klatzky’s hands shook as he sipped the coffee. ‘I thought it best you see for yourself,’ he said, looking at the envelope still clutched tight in his hand.

Lambert sat straight in his chair, scratching a day’s growth of stubble on his face. It was genuinely good to see his old friend. He’d only agreed to meet him as he’d sounded so scared on the phone. Now he was here, Lambert regretted not seeing more of him in the last two years.

‘How have you been, Si?’

‘So-so. I’m sorry I haven’t called before.’ He hesitated. ‘And now, contacting you in these circumstances.’ He still had a strong grip on the envelope, his knuckles turning white with the effort.

‘I’m not working at the moment, Simon.’

‘I didn’t know who else to talk to.’ Klatzky produced a bottle of clear liquid from his grainy-black rain jacket and poured half the contents into his coffee cup.

Some things didn’t change. ‘Are you going to show me then?’ Lambert didn’t want to rush him, but he didn’t like surprises. He needed to know what Klatzky wanted.

Klatzky drank heavily from the alcohol-fused drink, momentarily confused.

‘The envelope, Si.’

Klatzky stared at the envelope as if it had just appeared in his hand. He handed it to Lambert, his body trembling.

Klatzky’s name and address were printed on the front. There was no stamp. ‘You received this today?’

‘It was there when I got back.’

‘Back from where?’

‘I was out last night. Got in early this morning.’ He looked at Lambert as if expecting a reprimand.

Lambert opened the envelope and pulled out a file of A4 papers. Each page had a colour photo of the same subject taken from a different angle. Lambert tapped the table with the knuckles of his left hand as he read through the file.

‘It’s him, Mike,’ said Klatzky.

The subject was the deceased figure of an emaciated man. The skin of the corpse was a dull yellow. Wisps of frazzled hair clung to the man’s cheek bones, matted together with a green-brown substance. The corpse’s mouth was wide open, caught forever in a look of rictus surprise. Where the man’s eyes should have been were two hollow sockets. Tendrils of skin and matter dripped down onto the man’s face. Lambert recognised the Latin insignia carved intricately into the man’s chest. He placed the file back in the envelope, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.

‘Well?’ asked Klatzky.

‘Where did you get this from?’

Klatzky poured more of the clear liquid into his cup. ‘I told you. It was there this morning when I got back. Why the hell has this been sent to me, Mike?’ he asked, loud enough to receive some disapproving looks from the young mothers.

Lambert rubbed his face. If he’d known what was in the envelope, then he would never have suggested meeting in such a public place. ‘I’ll talk to some people. See what I can find out. I’ll need to keep this,’ he said.

‘But why was it sent to me, Mikey?’

‘I don’t know.’ Lambert checked the address on the envelope. ‘You’re still in the same flat, over in East Ham?’

‘Afraid so.’

‘Have you seen anyone else recently?’

‘You mean from Uni? No. You’re the first one I’ve seen since the…’ he hesitated. ‘Since, the funeral.’

Lambert replayed the images in his head, trying to ignore the expectation etched onto Klatzky’s face. The inscription on the victim’s chest read:

In oculis animus habitat.

The lettering, smudged by leaking blood, had dried into thick maroon welts on the pale skin of the man’s body. Lambert didn’t need to see the man’s eyeless sockets to work out the translation:

The soul dwells in the eyes.

They left the coffee house together. ‘Do you have somewhere else you can go?’ asked Lambert.

‘Why? Do you think I’m next?’ asked Klatzky.

Lambert wasn’t sure what Klatzky had put in his coffee but the man was swaying from side to side. He placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Let’s not panic. These might not have come from the murderer. But until we do find out where they came from, and why they were sent to you, it would be sensible to stay away from the flat.’

‘Should we tell Billy’s parents or something? Christ, what are they are going to think?’

Billy Nolan had been the ninth and, until now, last victim of the so called Souljacker killer. A close friend of Lambert and Klatzky, Nolan was murdered in his final year at Bristol University where they had all studied. The killer had never been caught and everything Lambert had seen in the file suggested that he had started working again.

‘Look, you need to get somewhere and rest up. Let me worry about the details.’

‘I want to help, Mikey.’

‘You can stay out of trouble. That will help the most. I’ll contact you when I know something.’ He grabbed Klatzky’s hand and shook it. ‘It’ll be okay, Si.’

Klatzky’s handshake was weak, his palm wet with sweat. He swayed for a second before stumbling across the road to a bar called The Blue Boar.

Lambert stood outside the coffee shop, his hand clutched tight to the envelope. Years ago Lambert would have jumped straight into the investigation. The responsible thing would be to locate the Senior Investigating Officer on the case, inform them that Klatzky had received the material. But he needed time to process the information, to decipher why Klatzky had received the photos.

He walked to Clockhouse station and caught a train to Charing Cross, his mind racing. Making sure no one could see him, he opened the envelope. He scanned each page in turn, studied every detail. The photographs were direct copies from a crime report. The photographer had captured the corpse from all angles. The camera zoomed in on the victim’s wounds. The ragged skin around the eye sockets, the incision marks magnified in gruesome detail, the intricate detail of the Latin inscription, each letter meticulously carved into the victim’s skin. It was definitely a professional job.

Reaching London, Lambert took the short walk to Covent Garden. His wife, Sophie, was waiting for him in a small bistro off the old market building. She sat near the entrance, head buried in a leather folio. ‘Oh, hi,’ she said, on seeing him.

‘Hi, yourself.’

She shut the document she’d been reading. ‘Shall we order?’ she asked, business-like as usual.

They’d been married for twelve years. Sophie was half-French on her mother’s side. A petite woman, she had short black hair, and a soft round face which made her look ten years younger than her actual age of thirty-nine.

They both ordered the fish of the day. ‘So how was Simon?’ she asked.

‘Not great,’ said Lambert.

‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense. What did he want?’

Absentmindedly, Lambert touched the document in his inside jacket pocket. ‘Oh, nothing dramatic. He was thinking of putting together some sort of reunion.’

He could tell she knew he was lying. They ordered water to go with the fish and sat through the meal in companionable silence. Each avoiding discussing the reason they were there.

‘Everything’s booked,’ she said, finally. ‘The same church as last year. We can use the church hall afterwards. All the catering is organised.’

Lambert drank the water, cracking a fragment of ice which had dropped into his mouth. A shiver ran through his body as the cold water dripped down his throat. ‘Okay,’ he said, realising how useless the words sounded. Now he was, even after all this time, still unable to deal with the enormity of the situation.

‘We need to finalise the music,’ said Sophie.

Lambert gripped his glass of water, tried to focus on something more positive. ‘Do you remember that track she loved in the summer before she started school? She used to go crazy. Blondie, wasn’t it? She used to pick up her tennis racket and play along. I can’t remember for the life of me what it was called.’

Sophie beamed, reliving the memory. Then, in an instant, her eyes darkened. It had been two years since their daughter, Chloe, had died. They’d decided to hold a memorial service each year on Chloe’s birthday. Sophie’s mother had suggested they postpone it this year. She’d argued that rekindling the same memories every twelve months denied a necessary part of the grieving process. In principle Lambert agreed, but it was not a subject he could broach with Sophie. He blamed himself for Chloe’s death, and though she insisted otherwise, he was sure Sophie did too.

Eventually they agreed on a small song list.

‘I need to go,’ said Sophie. She stood and kissed him on the cheek, a perfunctory habit devoid of emotion. At home, they slept in separate rooms rarely spending more than five minutes together. This was the first meal they’d shared in almost a year.

Lambert hadn’t worked since Chloe’s death. He’d been hospitalised, and received substantial compensation. The last time Sophie had raised the subject of him returning to work they’d argued. Now the matter was never discussed.

‘I’ll be home early this evening,’ she said. ‘Then I’m out for dinner.’

She loitered by the table and regarded him in the way only she could. Lambert saw love in the gesture, tinged with compassion and empathy. But what he saw most of all was pity.

After she left, he paid the bill and walked outside. He found a secluded spot and took out the manila envelope once more. The easiest thing would be to send the file to the authorities and forget Klatzky had ever given it to him. And if he hadn’t just had lunch with Sophie, and seen that look of pity, that would have been his course.

Instead, he put the envelope back in his jacket and walked along the Strand. On a side street, he entered a small establishment he’d used in the past.

Inside, he purchased a pre-charged Pay As You Go mobile phone in cash.

From memory, he dialled a number he hadn’t called in two years.

Chapter 2

As expected, the man didn’t answer. Lambert left a message asking for a meeting. Ten minutes later he received a text message with an address and time.

Lambert caught the tube to Angel in Islington and located a set of rented offices. He showed his identification to the male receptionist but didn’t mention the name of the man he was supposed to meet. The receptionist led him to a small office area. He entered a four-digit code on a side panel and ushered Lambert into the room. The room had the feel of a prison cell. It had no window, only four brick walls and a steel-framed door. Lambert sat on one of the three faux-leather office chairs situated around a rectangular glass table and studied the photos once more.

Glenn Tillman exploded into the room five minutes later. A bulldog of a man, almost as wide as he was tall, Tillman had a pouty, baby-like face which looked out of place on top of his heaving muscle-strewn body.

‘I don’t like to be summoned,’ he said, as way of greeting.

‘Good to see you too,’ said Lambert. The last time he’d seen Tillman had been shortly after Chloe’s funeral. Both men had agreed that Lambert should take some extended time away from work. Lambert hadn’t heard from him since.

Lambert dropped the envelope onto the glass table. Tillman moved towards him and picked it up, his expression passive as he scanned the photos.

‘And?’ he said.

‘I hoped I would have been informed if anything came in on this,’ said Lambert.

Tillman sat, his breathing heavy. A blue striped tie bulged rhythmically against his thick neck. ‘You don’t work for us at the moment, Michael.’

‘This relates directly to me, sir. It would have been a courtesy.’

Tillman studied the photos again. ‘This goes back to your University days, doesn’t it? I remember it from your file. What did the press call him, the Souljacker or something?’ He put the file down. ‘Look, this is the first I’ve heard of it. It must be with the local CID. It’s not something that would come our way, you know that.’

‘I want access,’ said Lambert.

Tillman smirked. ‘There’s no access, Michael. If you’re not working for us then no way.’

‘Employ me then. Private contract.’

‘We don’t do that any more. We’re part of the NCA now. Sort of,’ he said, as an afterthought. The National Crime Agency had replaced SOCA, the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the previous year.

‘Right,’ said Lambert. Lambert had been working for SOCA when Tillman had recruited him. They’d previously worked together when Lambert had first joined CID. Tillman had been his first DI.

Tillman now headed a department known simply as The Group. It was a cross alliance with military intelligence. There had been five others in Lambert’s team. Aside from Tillman, The Group comprised one DI and one DS from the MET, and two operatives from MI5. For the first time in his career, Lambert had signed the Official Secrets Act for work and received a security clearance level. Lambert had long suspected that there were a number of similar groups working independent from Tillman’s collective.

‘Look, sir. I don’t want to push this but I need access.’ He was taking a calculated risk speaking to his superior this way. It was not beyond Tillman to tell him where to go, to leave him in the room for twenty-four hours to dwell on his insolence.

Tillman lifted his hand to his face. ‘You’re calling it in?’

Tillman didn’t really owe him anything, but his superior didn’t see it that way. Lambert had protected him once and still held potentially incriminating evidence on the man. He would never betray Tillman, but Tillman was honour bound to repay the favour. ‘I don’t want it to be like that, but if it has to be that way.’