Paid to Kill: A HOLIDAY CAN BE MURDER (The Dead Speak Book 5)

by Emmy Ellis

  The memory of leaving that flat had been a blur—still was. He’d found himself at his mother’s and holed up in his childhood bedroom for the week, then had returned to duty a changed man. He no longer felt guilty if he killed someone, because every time he did, he was killing Christine and what she’d done. He no longer had sleepless nights wondering how long the affair had been going on, why he hadn’t been enough to wait for.

  No longer gave a shit about anything much.

  Randall came out into the foyer, and Jackson jumped.

  He needed to remain vigilant. He hadn’t heard the man coming, and that wasn’t good. If he did that tonight, lost concentration, he’d be right in the shit.

  Chapter Nine

  Langham’s dinner was going down a treat. Steak and chips with peas and half a grilled tomato on the side. “Did you notice anything about that woman?”

  “Which one, the waitress?” Oliver drew his eyebrows together. “Nope. She looked like any other young girl to me. Why?” He speared a chip with his fork then stuck it in his mouth.

  “Not her. She was fine. I meant the old woman in The Running Hare.”

  Oliver swallowed. “I sensed something about her the minute she appeared from that doorway in the bar—you know, the first time we saw her.”

  Langham cut into his steak. Pink juices seeped out onto his plate. “She was angry, possibly hurt that we were leaving. What did you sense about her?”

  “I got the idea she’d been up to something. Like she’d been doing something before we’d turned up. Her face was red, if you remember, and it looked like her hair was greasy, but thinking about it now, it could just have been wet. When we went back to get our bags, her hair was dry, clean.”

  “Hmm. So what are you suggesting?”

  “I don’t know. She could have been washing her hair in the kitchen when we got there—assuming that was a kitchen she’d come out of. Maybe she was flustered at seeing us, hence the red face. And she said she’d forgotten we were coming, remember? Old people get like that. Forgetful. But she definitely dried her hair while we were gone.”

  Langham nodded. Remembered her chest. The spots.

  Oliver went on, “So why did you want to know whether I noticed anything about her?”

  “She had dots of blood on her chest, and it’s bothered me ever since I saw them. I didn’t see them when we got the keys off her, but in our room, she lifted her hand to her neck, and it drew my attention. Coupled with what you’ve just said, about her seeming to have been up to something…” He shook his head. “A copper’s crap. Ignore me.”

  Oliver gave his dinner his full attention. Langham ate the last piece of his steak. Oliver stared through the restaurant window, down the street in the direction of the cottage with the high hedge. Langham resisted turning around to see what was going on. He’d uphold his side of the bargain and pretend nothing untoward had happened there. And if Oliver hadn’t told him someone was dead, he wouldn’t know exactly what had occurred anyway, just that a policeman had visited the premises.

  “The old dear in that cottage,” Oliver said. “She’s pressing me. It hurts to deny her.”

  Shit.

  “Hurting how?” Langham asked.

  “Making me feel bad. She needs my help—our help—and knows I’m preventing her from speaking to me. She doesn’t understand why, I can feel it.” He jerked his head at the window. “There’s a copper coming over here. Fairbrother might have told him you’re in the village.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake…” Although he’d wanted to help, had felt he needed to, now that an officer might well be coming over here to ask him, it bugged him. It was different, wasn’t it, offering help as opposed to being asked or told to. “He might not be coming over here for that at all. Fairbrother thinks we’re staying at that bloody pub, and I haven’t told him otherwise. Haven’t looked at my phone since I texted him. So eat your dinner, ignore the spirit.”

  Oliver continued to stare down the road.

  “And,” Langham said, “giving her cottage your attention isn’t going to help, is it? A tether, that’s what you’re making it, something that links you to her. Stop looking, stop giving her something to grab on to.”

  “But she’s found me anyway. Makes no difference what I look at now. I just need to concentrate on keeping her out.”

  Langham let air out slowly. “Fair enough.” He ate some chips then cut his tomato up. The seeds oozed and settled on his plate like snot. His stomach churned, and he pushed his plate away, no longer hungry.

  A scream rent the air. Langham jumped up and took stock of the dining room. The large group of diners had left. A married couple were eating on the opposite side, darting their heads back and forth between him and the dining room door. Langham glanced at Oliver apologetically and rushed towards where the scream had come from—somewhere out in reception. He burst through the doorway, met with the scene of the blonde receptionist crumpled in a police officer’s arms, her legs bent at the knees as though they’d given way, the officer clearly struggling to hold her up.

  “Here, let me help.” Langham strode across the foyer and took the woman into his arms. “I’m a detective, by the way,” he said to the officer. “I’ll show you my ID in a second. Let’s just get this lady settled.” To her, he said, “Is there a back room, love? Somewhere I can take you?”

  She nodded, her cheek rasping on his shirt. “The d-door behind the d-desk.”

  He jerked his head at the officer and led the way to the room. It held a sofa against the back wall, a coffee table in front of it, a few magazines scattered on top. Langham lowered her to the sofa and sat beside her, keeping one arm around her back. Whatever had her screaming had shocked the life out of her. She’d gone pale and looked like she could barely think straight.

  “What’s happened?” Langham stared up at the officer while fishing in his pocket for his ID. He showed it, then, when the man seemed satisfied, tucked it away. “Is this to do with what’s going on over the road?”

  “The young lady here is related to the deceased at the address I’ve just come from. It’s her gran, sir.”

  Oh shit. “Right.” Langham gave the blonde a reassuring squeeze and checked her face for signs of severe distress. “Is your dad about, love? Or someone else we can get hold of to sit with you?”

  “He’s at home,” she whispered. “Upstairs on the top floor. We live up there. Through that other door.”

  “Okay.” Langham glanced up at the officer again. “Would you sit with her while I go and see him?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Langham exited the room via a second door that led directly to a set of stairs, then another set as he guessed he was going to the very top, perhaps to what would normally be the attic space. He knocked on a door and waited for it to open.

  A man of about fifty stood there, salt-and-pepper hair brushed back from his face, messy, as though he’d run his hands through it recently. He frowned. “Yes? How did you get up here?”

  Langham showed him his ID. “You’ll need to come downstairs, sir.” He was tempted to explain, but it wasn’t his case. “There’s an officer who needs to speak to you.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Not another complaint, surely. I come up here for a bit of shut-eye, and look what happens. Her down the road starts.”

  “Her down the road?” Langham stepped back.

  The man made his way downstairs. “Yes, the woman at The Running Hare,” he said over his shoulder. “Always making things up, phoning the police with fake incidents.”

  Langham followed him down.

  “I can tell you I’ve been up here asleep,” the man said. “I’ve not done anything to her. I haven’t even spoken to her for weeks. Best to avoid her, I think, otherwise it gives her ammunition.”

  “That’s sensible,” Langham said. “Could you wait there a minute? Don’t go through into that room just yet.”

  The father paused at the bottom of the stairs. He stared at Langham and frowne
d. “This isn’t about her, is it?”

  Langham joined him. “No, sir, I’m afraid it isn’t. Just wait there a second, all right?” He went into the room, closed the door, then motioned for the officer to come over. “Her father’s just out there. I’ll leave you to it. I would stay to help, but I’m on holiday. I’m staying here, should you need me for advice or whatnot, but anything else, you’re on your own.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Langham would normally have checked with the woman to see if she was all right, but he steeled himself against going over to her and strode out instead, leaving her grief behind. He went back into the dining room and sat.

  “What happened?” Oliver was still eyeing the cottage over the road.

  “The old lady who got killed. She’s the receptionist’s gran. I made sure she was okay then went up to get her dad. Whether the dead woman is his or his wife’s mother, I have no idea. I didn’t hang around to find out. Left it to the officer who’d broken the news to the receptionist. She hasn’t taken it well, but then who would?”

  Oliver didn’t turn from the window. “We’re going to get brought into this, you know that, don’t you?”

  “We’re bloody not.” Langham took a sip of water. It eased his parched throat from the adrenaline rush. “I’m telling you, they can get on with it.”

  “I suspect we’ll have no choice.” Oliver sounded distant.

  “What do you mean, we’ll have no choice? Of course we’ve got a bloody choice. We didn’t see anything, we know nothing. First we knew of it was seeing the patrol car on the drive. We didn’t hear a thing, see a thing.”

  “What about if someone else butts in and we’re forced to help?”

  “Forced? What, d’you think Fairbrother or whoever is going to turn up here will make me go back to work? Really?”

  Why did Oliver appear so vacant, so out of sorts, so riveted to the cottage?

  “Don’t be angry with me,” Oliver said.

  “Angry about what?”

  Oliver continued his study of the cottage. Langham’s heart rate kicked up again, another surge of adrenaline streaking through him, and on top of what had already flooded his system, he was a bit off kilter.

  Langham frowned. “Will you just spit it out? What’s the matter?”

  Oliver finally pulled his gaze from outside and looked at Langham. “I let her in. I let the dead lady speak to me.”

  “Shit,” Langham said. “I thought it might be too much for you. Keeping her out, I mean. Are you all right?”

  “Not too bad. I’ve been worse. But when I said we were going to get dragged into it, believe me, we are.”

  “What did she say to you? Tell me from the beginning.” Langham glanced at Oliver’s glass. It was still full of water. “Do you need a drink? As in, a proper drink?”

  “In a minute. Let me get this out first, so I don’t forget. It’s important.”

  Langham drummed the fingers of one hand on his thigh. He needed a proper drink, but he was buggered if he’d get up. And calling a waitress when the hotel staff were in mourning—no, they could go into the bar in a bit. And going back to The Running Hare for a swift pint wasn’t something he’d do no matter how much he needed some alcohol.

  Oliver released a long breath. “She burst in, flooded me with her spirit. I felt sick, like she’d infected me with something. She said who she was and babbled at me, her words tumbling out so they didn’t make sense. I asked her—in my head, what with that couple sitting over there—to calm down or to show me pictures instead. I could hear her breathing as she thought about how to do it. I mean, it’s not something I imagine they just know how to do, transferring images like that. But she managed it. The problem was, they were worse than her words. They all meshed together and made this thing like a vortex, as though all the pictures she was showing me were being sucked down a plughole.”

  He rubbed his hands up and down his face, and Langham wondered if Oliver was seeing it all again.

  “It fucking hurt my head. Then she seemed to get the hang of it, to get herself calm, and she spoke again, and this time it was slower. She said she’d been knitting, watching the twenty-four-hour news about someone who’d broken into a house, would you believe. Someone banged on her back door, she said, and she jumped—the story on the news had got her jittery. Anyway, she went to see who it was, thinking it would be a family member, because all of her family knew not to knock on her front door.”

  “So she wasn’t afraid of who would be at the door.” Langham grimaced. “Whoever killed her knew that her family always went around the back. Someone who lives here then, or knows the family. That narrows it down.”

  “I thought the same, so I asked her if it was someone she knew. She said she knew her all right.”

  “Her?” Jesus wept.

  “Yes, her.”

  “Did she tell you who it was?”

  “Not yet.”

  “So what happened next?”

  “She let her in, thinking they’d have another row, that the woman would say her piece then go away again like she’d done before. But she didn’t. She said she had some people coming to visit—the killer did—and that before the old woman could get her hands on them, she was going to sort her out.”

  Langham swallowed a slew of bile that had zipped up into his throat. This didn’t sound good. “Ask her now. I don’t want to know how she got killed, I just want to know who did it.”

  Oliver closed his eyes and mumbled a few words, then said louder, “She’s whispering. I can’t make out what she’s saying. Sounds like, ‘Tell him. Tell him what I said first.’ Right. So the killer pushed her down onto her sofa then knelt on her chest, pinning her there. She was angry, probably how she had the strength to do that, and bent over, putting her hands around her throat. She squeezed, and the woman, the one being killed, coughed. A spray of blood came out—like a fine mist—and went on the killer and… Shit, it’s her from The Running Hare, isn’t it?” He stared at Langham, eyes wide as realisation hit him.

  “That’s what I thought.” Langham shook his head. “And afterwards she went home, scrubbed her face—which is why it was so red—and washed her hair. Except she didn’t wash her chest properly. I can see it all now, how she would have rushed because she knew we were coming. She hadn’t ‘totally forgotten’ our arrival at all.”

  “She killed because of us, because we were coming to stay.” Oliver blinked several times.

  “No, not because of us specifically. It could have been anyone booking a room there. She’d got herself so pissed off with this place getting all the guests it tipped her over the edge. And when she was in our room, and we came back, she knew we were leaving. She’d probably watched us come here. And now she’ll be angry, or maybe even disillusioned, about how she killed and we left her anyway. And think about it, she must be deranged. How would killing the gran stop people staying here? Wouldn’t she have to kill the receptionist or her father? Her mother, if she has one around? And this,” Langham said, reaching into his pocket, “I have to call in.”

  He switched his ringer and vibrate alerts back on, then selected Fairbrother’s number from his contact list.

  Fairbrother took a while to answer. “What are you doing ringing me?”

  “I know I said I wouldn’t but—”

  “And if it’s about Mondon and Hiscock, Mondon’s at home, but I don’t have a location for Hiscock yet. I can handle them. Have your holiday.”

  “It isn’t about them.”

  “Oh. Right. What is it about?”

  “Has our division had a call about a murder in Marsh Vines?”

  “Oh, you’re kidding me? Does crime follow you or what?”

  “Seems that way.”

  “I haven’t been called out to anything, but I can check whether someone else has.”

  “You’ll need to. I know who the killer is and why she did it.”

  Fairbrother sighed. “Okay, give it to me. Then go back to your holida
y.”

  * * * *

  “We’ll be leaving in the morning,” Langham said. “If you don’t mind, that is.”

  He sat next to Oliver in the bar, in one corner beside a jukebox that stood silent. He was grateful it wasn’t belting out any noise—he couldn’t be doing with that at the moment. He had a pint of Guinness in his hand, which reminded him of the man in The Running Hare. Had the old duffer known what the pub owner was going to do? Was he her husband? Was that why he’d stared at them the way he had, as though they had no right being there, arriving just a little bit early while she’d been murdering?

  Oliver swallowed a mouthful of lager. “No, I don’t mind. Where will we go?”

  “Home.”

  “Oh.”

  “To pick up our passports, make a last-minute booking online for abroad, then we’re fucking off. What do you fancy? My treat.”

  “Anywhere other than England. Somewhere we can’t be called back from easily. Unless one of our family members is in an accident or something.” Oliver paused, seeming thoughtful. “But since we went and visited my mum and she made it even clearer she wants nothing to do with me, I might not even come back from abroad if she was ill.”

  Langham put his Guinness down. “I don’t have anyone. Haven’t had for years. Had the same problem as you. Family turfed me out, you know the score. So if we got a call when we were abroad saying my mother or father had died, I wouldn’t be rushing back either.”

  Chapter Ten

  Nellie was still in the gay boys’ bedroom, staring out of the window. She’d been rooted to the spot and had no inclination to move ever since the men had left. But she’d have to soon. She had plans to make, other people to get rid of. Except things had gone awry, and she had to work out what to do next. Once she’d killed Matilda—and it had been easier than she’d thought—she’d left via the back, the same way she’d gone in. She hadn’t crossed the street in plain view going there or back, instead preferring to walk around the rear of all the houses so there was less chance of her being seen. Everyone who lived at this end of the street was at work during the day, only Matilda being at home. Nellie’s entrance and exit had been more or less safe.