Only the Dead Know

by C. J. Dunford

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title

  Copyright

  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

  A Chat with C.J. Dunford

  About the Book

  After a traumatic military tour in the Middle East, Daniel ‘Uneasy’ Truce returns home with PTSD. Something happened there. Something he never wants to come out.

  A few hand-shakes later, Truce lands a new job in a ragtag investigations unit. He may be emotionally awkward, but he’s got a knack for reading body language. Problem is, his boss hates him. Calls him mentally unsound. She gives Truce the dirty work. That's how he ends up with “the crazy old bat” case.

  At 11 a.m. every morning, June drops by her local police station to report a murder she witnessed. Initially the cops took her seriously. They visit the alleged victim’s home to find him very much alive. But June won’t give up, and her daily appearances become a nuisance. Truce is tasked to investigate. To shut her up. Soon June winds up dead-hit by a car. Was it really an accident? Truce thinks there’s more to the case. That maybe someone just doesn’t want the truth to come out …

  Only the Dead Know is the first book in the Daniel ‘Uneasy’ Truce Mystery series.

  About the Author

  C.J. Dunford is one of Caroline Dunford’s pseudonyms. She lives in Scotland in a cottage by the sea with her partner and her two young sons. As all authors are required to have as much life experience as possible she has been, at various times, a drama coach, an archery instructor, a counsellor, a qualified psychotherapist, a charity worker, a journalist, a voice actor, a hypnotherapist, and a playwright. Today she writes mainly novels, the odd (often very odd) short story, theatre plays, the occasional article, teaches and mentors. She can’t remember a time when she didn’t write or tell stories and seriously doubts that she could remain sane if she stopped doing so.

  Readers can connect with C.J. Dunford on various social media platforms:

  C.J. DUNFORD

  ONLY THE

  DEAD KNOW

  A Daniel ‘Uneasy’ Truce Mystery

  »be« by BASTEI ENTERTAINMENT

  Digital original edition

  »be« by Bastei Entertainment is an imprint of Bastei Lübbe AG

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. This book is written in British English.

  Copyright © 2018 by Bastei Lübbe AG, Schanzenstraße 6-20, 51063 Cologne, Germany

  Written by Caroline Dunford as C.J. Dunford

  Edited by Al Guthrie

  Project editor: Lori Herber

  Cover design: Christin Wilhelm, www.grafic4u.de

  Cover illustrations © shutterstock: Bastian Kienitz | Carlos Caetano | Maurizio Callari | Frank Brehm_frankolor

  E-book production: DTP.company

  ISBN 978-3-7325-6339-5

  www.be-ebooks.com

  Twitter: @be_ebooks_com

  CHAPTER 1

  He thinks it’s paint.

  He feels as if he’s been thrown in the deep end of a pool. Everything is muffled. Obscured. Air pounds his ear drums. A high-pitched whine cuts through his head as his vision blurs. Suddenly the world tilts, and he’s on his back looking up at the paint raining down on him. A sharp pain pierces his hip, like someone has stuck a dagger through to the bone. His right arm feels as if it is on fire. All he can smell is dust. The paint splatters softly on his face.

  Seconds.

  Has it only been seconds? Less?

  He doesn’t know.

  But he smells it now. The singed coppery smell of — it’s not paint. It’s …

  Daniel Truce wakes. His body shudders from the crown of his head to the tips of his toes. He feels like a guitar string someone is plucking hard. He grinds his hands into his eye sockets, and colour explodes across his vision. But he can’t erase the scene from his mind’s eye. It pulls him back. He takes his hands away and stares up at the ceiling. Tiny cracks in the paint trace a crazy pattern across the white plain, like a road map seen from a distance. He tries to focus on the haphazard “map” — imagining some long-lost civilisation. He can no longer feel the blood streaking his face. He rubs his face and holds his trembling hands in front of him. They’re clean. It’s over. Nothing he could have done. Nothing he can do now except move on. He repeats the mantra in his head. It’s a lesson he is still trying to learn.

  Truce staggers towards the shower, pausing only to look at the gaunt stranger in the mirror. A girlfriend once told him he looked like Jake Gyllenhaal. He had to Google him, but he quite liked the comparison.

  He runs his hand through his hair as if he can physically push away the nightmares. He could never voice how much he hates this weakness. How much it makes him hate himself. 1 …2 …3 … He takes a deep breath and exhales before turning on the tap. He has to check it’s water that comes out. No, he can never tell anyone. They would all be too understanding.

  Forty-five minutes later — he has learnt to allow himself time — he returns to the mirror, adjusting his tie. His old regiment’s tie. Silk with red lines, it’s exactly the kind of thing that anyone not in the know would easily overlook. But for Truce, these colours give him a sense of security and remind him of a world where he once understood everything. Where he fitted.

  It’s possible to pair the tie with matching socks. But the thought of what Leighton would say, stops him. Suits are the one thing he’s allowed himself to splurge on. Becoming an orphan at an early age instilled in him the need to look after himself. Having money in the bank is important to him. There’s never been anyone he could turn to for help financially. The only person Truce has ever relied on is Leighton. And more often than not it’s been Leighton who’s needed a loan from him.

  Strange seeing himself in a uniform after not being in one for so long. Despite the cost, it still doesn’t look right on him. He tugs at the tie.

  “That you all ready for another day at the Big Blue Barn?” Leighton, his auburn hair wild and unkempt, sticks his head unannounced round Truce’s door. His chin is covered with mottled ginger whiskers. Try as he might, Leighton can never manage to grow a beard.

  “I keep telling you it isn’t blue.”

  Leighton comes in and perches on the end of the bed. His civvies are casual to the point of dilapidation. “The civilian world, it’s all mad. The police station isn’t blue, and you don’t have to wear a uniform. That’s not sporting, I tell you. It’s not exactly giving the criminals a fair chance.”

  “Like yourself?” says Truce, a smile tugging playfully at the edge of his mouth.

  “Was that the glimmer of a sense of humour there?” says Leighton, folding his arms across his chest. “You’d better watch that. Could be the start of you turning into a proper human being.”

  Truce turns and picks up his bag — “a man-bag” the shop assistant had called it. “I need to go.”

  “Have a nice day at the office, love.” Leighton snickers. “Tea’ll be
on the table when you get home.”

  Truce whips out a clout at Leighton’s head, but as usual, he evades it. “Get a job,” Truce says.

  Leighton shrugs and calls after Truce, “If I see a reason to, I will.”

  ***

  Truce lowers himself into his Audi R8 and presses the button that starts the engine. He still finds it odd not to use a key. He settles back into his seat, ready for the drive. Hopefully the Bridge won’t be too busy. Still, he doesn’t regret buying in Edinburgh. The drive across the Forth to work every morning must be one of the most beautiful commutes in the world.

  He thinks back over what Leighton said about needing a reason to get a job. As if contributing to the household bills weren’t reason enough. It was always the same with him. Right from the start, Leighton would go his own, lazy way unless he saw a good “reason” to do otherwise. It was amazing he'd lasted so long in the military police, but then he only went in because Truce had. Apparently he couldn't think of anything better to do. And they had to do something. It’s not like a children’s home will keep you forever. It was find a place to go, or join the waiting list for a council flat. Truce had always needed boundaries. He had known that if he didn’t get his feet secured on the ground, if he didn’t have rules to follow, then he’d fall apart. Leighton could drift anywhere. Ever since they first met as kids, he’d anchored himself to Truce. Truce, who found it nigh on impossible to make friends, had welcomed his friendship like a desert traveller finding an oasis. Okay, so Leighton could be an annoying jerk, but he was Truce’s annoying jerk. He was always there. Leighton always had his back. Chalk and cheese, but somehow an indivisible team.

  But Truce follows orders. He likes to know where he stands. He likes to define himself. “By your job?” He can almost hear Leighton mocking him. “You’re a sad man.”

  But Truce would disagree. There’s right, and there’s wrong. It’s easier to get by when you see the world in black and white. Shades of grey are for Civvie Street. Only now, to his dismay, he lives in Civvie Street.

  He arrives at the ex-country house, now home to the experimental team he is part of, and parks in his clearly labelled space: Daniel Truce, Special Advisor to the Combined Special Crimes Task Force, Police Scotland. It’s still not clear if he’s ever going to get a warrant card. The outgoing head of his regiment, Major Percival Bay — a decent man despite his overly posh name — pulled strings to get him the job.

  “Can’t have those considerable talents of yours going to waste,” he’d said. “Because you can't exactly stay in the services now, can you? Consider this just another way to serve your country. You were one of the best Military Police Officers we had. Always straight as a die. Always got your man, as they say in the Westerns, even though you were scrupulously correct.”

  Truce remembers the conversation as if it were only a few minutes ago. His military career snuffed out in an instant. It was the first time he’d lost a man who'd gone AWOL.

  He should be grateful that Major Bay had gone to school with some police bigwig, landing Truce his current gig. But he isn’t. He’d endured three gruelling rounds of interviews with important people in the service he was unlikely to ever see again. Some of them incredulous that one of his main talents was his ability to read people. Until he “read” them and told them what he saw. “Just like Sherlock Holmes,” one of the older men had said, and guffawed in delight. But Truce knows he is nothing like the famous detective. He’s no genius, and his talent for reading others is learned. Starting at the age of eight, he’s now read every book he can find on behaviour, human and animal — because he simply doesn’t get people. Without being able to read their involuntary cues, he knows he’d spend his days in a state of perpetual surprise and a feeling of overwhelming chaos.

  But the hardest part of getting this job had been passing his psych-evaluation. Therapy hadn’t helped, as far as Truce is concerned. It’s made everything worse. He was better coping on his own, so he used all his skills to lie about how mentally well he was — and he’d won.

  He gets out of the car, checks the contents of his man bag twice and, when he can’t avoid it any longer, walks into the building.

  He nods to Bob on the desk as he holds up his pass. At least he thinks it’s Bob. One sergeant on the wrong side of middle age sliding into slow oblivion is about the same as another. Bob grunts back at him in acknowledgement and then speaks. The Bobs don’t often speak, so Truce stops to listen. “She’s in a rare mood.”

  Truce gives a brisk nod of understanding and walks into the open-plan office.

  “Truce.” Her voice has all the warmth of a blast freezer. Chief Superintendent Lydia Rose looks pointedly at her watch. She is younger than Truce, barely cusping thirty, and fiercely ambitious.

  Truce glances at one of the wall clocks. 8:02 a.m. If he’s late, it’s by two minutes at most. No matter that he was on site at the start of his shift. Late is late.

  “Ma’am,” he says and waits. “It won’t happen again.”

  “My office, now.”

  He follows her obediently into the only office on the open-plan floor with a door. Her perfume lingers in the air, like the tinge of sulphur that hangs in the air after Hogmanay fireworks. He swallows a cough. Rose sits and picks up a file. Her desk has what might be termed significant acreage. Its blue leather top shines with polish. A tiny gold motif is etched around the edge. Apart from the file, she has a small wooden in, out and pending trays. There is a sheaf of paper in the out section. Nothing else. Even her computer is on another small table to her side. The surface appears to have no purpose other than to be empty. A reminder that Rose is always on top of the job. She holds the file above her desk, half-way across, in the no man’s land. He doesn’t reach for it, and she doesn’t hand it to him. Classic powerplay.

  “I’ve got one for you,” says Rose. “Right up your street. Woman who keeps coming in to a local station at Dunfarlin to report a murder. Every day, 11 a.m. on the dot, the same murder. People are beginning to set their watches by her. Something you might be advised to emulate, considering today’s tardiness.”

  “You want me to investigate, ma’am?” says Truce.

  Rose leads the experimental team under the Police Scotland re-organisation banner. It has a kind of floating brief and is filled with officers who have a cornucopia of odd skills. DS Herbert worked in IT, but joined the thin blue line when he realised the pay was better. DS Finnigan was a failed forensic scientist — a divorce during her final exams led to a downward spiral into working in retail, but now scooped up by the force. DI Random was a plumber before he'd heard the siren call to join. Undiagnosed dyslexia had held him back at school. Then he'd taken the MENSA test for a laugh and scored so highly that it had been — well, noticed. Now, he was known for his incisive mind and unfailing ability to gauge the threat level of a crime scene in a decrepit building. DS Blue, was one of the oddest, a young woman in her thirties, built like an athlete and strangely silent about her past. Truce had lost count of the number of languages she could speak. A cast of wayward characters in one sense. It was the kind of place Truce should have fitted into.

  “Think you’re something special, do you, Truce? That you can succeed where others fail?”

  He thinks of the number of servicemen he’s tracked down in the past, the kind of conditions he’s worked under, and his long, long list of successes. “I have some skills, ma’am,” he says.

  “I don’t want you to investigate it. I want you to shut her up. Supposedly your people skills are legendary. Show me you can handle this and maybe I’ll let you play with the big boys later.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “When she first delivered her eye-witness report, it was fully followed up. I don’t know how it is overseas in your foreign fucking resorts of an army camp, but here we don’t pussy-foot around.” She pauses.

  Truce watches her consciously slow her breathing to regain control of herself. He wonders why he upsets her so much. He is clenching
his fists tightly below her eyeline, wanting nothing more than to launch a tirade in defence of his fellow servicemen. But he knows better than to rise to her bait.

  She continues, “Anyway, it’s an engaging story except the man she claims she saw killed is walking around alive and well.”

  “Twins, ma’am?”

  “Life isn’t a TV show, Truce.” She sighs and pushes back a stray hair that has had the audacity to escape her sleek, blonde ponytail. For a moment Truce wonders if with her hair down and minus the scowl, she might look human. She glances down at the file. “But yes, the investigating officer did check. Woman’s a nut job.”

  “I see, ma’am,” says Truce, although he doesn’t have a clue where this is going.

  “Which is why,” says Rose, “I thought we could send you in. You could talk to her: mental case to mental case.”

  He doesn’t take this bait, either. While it wasn’t uncommon for this kind of harsh comment to go unremarked in the army, Truce knows that she is out of line for someone in a civilian service. No doubt why she took him into her office. He focusses his attention on the wall, looking just past her left ear, so she won’t notice he isn’t looking at her anymore. He deliberately slows his breathing, as Rose did, and doesn’t let his attention waiver. Stay calm. Be civil. He won’t tell her what he thinks of her.

  “May I speak freely, ma’am?” he asks.

  “This isn’t the bloody army,” says Rose.

  “I get the feeling you don’t like me, ma’am.”

  “Oh, and what gives you that idea?”

  Truce could say he’s noticed that whenever he comes into a room, she never raises her eyebrows when she catches sight of him, but he doubts she knows this is a totally involuntary facial tic all humans have. It’s a sign of pleasure at seeing someone.

  “Gut feeling, ma’am,” is all he says.