DON'T SCREAM an absolutely gripping killer thriller with a huge twist (Detective Jeff Rickman Book 3)

by MARGARET MURPHY

  Foster pounded on the front door a second time. In the adjoining house a dog was barking itself hoarse, hurling itself with foaming rage at the cracked glass panel of the front door. Mrs Elliott’s house was in no better condition: the paintwork had long since lost its gloss, fading from red to scabby pink. The garden was a patch of scruffy turf, blackened in the centre by an oil leak — almost certainly not from a lawnmower.

  Foster raised his fist and pounded again, rattling the door in its frame. The windows were shut tight, despite the warmth of the day, and nothing stirred in the house.

  ‘This is hopeless,’ he said. ‘Let’s jack it in, do something useful.’

  Hart took a step back to scan the one upper window. DS Foster had a low boredom threshold, but a couple more minutes of perseverance might save them a return journey later. ‘Just a minute,’ she said. ‘I think the curtain moved.’

  Seconds later the door flung open and Mrs Elliott thrust her face into Foster’s. ‘Will you shut that bloody racket?’

  Hart wrinkled her nose against the forty-percent-proof air expelled from the woman’s lungs.

  ‘That bleeding dog!’ Mrs Elliott leaned across the narrow strip of brickwork separating the two houses and slapped the neighbouring front door, which only enraged the animal more.

  ‘Felicity Elliott?’ Foster asked, over the row.

  She folded her arms. ‘Who’s asking?’

  Foster held up his warrant card. ‘Can we talk inside?’

  Mrs Elliott gave a brief tut and turned her back on them, shuffling down the hallway in shapeless slippers that slurped and slapped with each step.

  Foster cocked an eyebrow at Hart and she shrugged, stepping inside. Mrs Elliott disappeared into a room on the right, and they followed, finding themselves in a small sitting room. The curtains were drawn and pale pink light filtered through them, adding an extra wash to the woman’s already florid colouring. The room was crammed with ill-matched chairs, each of which had a slick of black slime along the arms.

  Mrs Elliott dropped into one of the armchairs with a grunt and a creak of upholstery springs. She was overweight, but not morbidly so. All the same, her body seemed to lack definition, and it filled the armchair, pressing unyieldingly against its sides. She immediately lit a cigarette, adding to the tobacco reek which overlaid the sweet odour of fermented liquor permeating the room. She didn’t invite them to sit, for which Hart was grateful. Hart noticed a few lager cans and cider bottles among the debris of old magazines and full ashtrays, but the alcoholic miasma seemed to ooze from Mrs Elliott’s pores. Hart recognised it from the binge drinkers and steady, seven-days-a-week alcoholics she had arrested, cautioned or even worked with in her time on the force.

  ‘We’ve been trying to reach you all morning, Mrs Elliott,’ Hart said.

  ‘That was you, was it? You’ve woke me up I don’t know how many times.’

  ‘Didn’t it occur to you to answer the door?’ Foster demanded.

  ‘Didn’t it occur to youse lot I might need me sleep?’

  Foster caught his breath and held it, looking to Hart to take over.

  ‘Mrs Elliott,’ she said. ‘We’re here with good reason.’

  They waited for the inevitable questions: What’s happened? Is something wrong? Always, at such moments, people think about their loved ones. As far as they knew, there was just Felicity Elliott and her daughter. But Mrs Elliott looked at them without curiosity or anxiety.

  ‘I’m afraid we have bad news,’ Hart said.

  Mrs Elliott glanced around the room before turning bloodshot eyes on Hart. What could be worse than this? she seemed to imply.

  ‘It’s your daughter, Jasmine,’ Hart said.

  ‘I know what she’s called.’ Mrs Elliott took a drag on her cigarette and squinted at them through the smoke. ‘And I’m not interested.’ Her voice was coarsened by drink and cigarette smoke, and her features marred by years of alcohol abuse.

  ‘This isn’t just a spot of trouble,’ Hart said, hoping that Mrs Elliott would make the connection if she gave her a little more time.

  ‘She’s dead,’ Foster said, more bluntly than Hart would have liked. Mrs Elliott’s gaze swivelled to him, but she showed no emotion. ‘She was murdered.’

  Hart shot Foster a sharp look. ‘We’re sorry to bring you such distressing news.’

  Mrs Elliott tapped her ash deliberately into the heaped ashtray balanced on the arm of the chair.

  Foster shifted from one foot to the other. ‘Can you tell us anything about Jasmine: her friends, boyfriends, habits?’

  Mrs Elliott snorted. ‘Habits, yeah. She had a habit, all right.’

  ‘Jasmine was an addict?’ Hart asked.

  ‘You been doing this job long, love?’

  Hart tried again. ‘Did Jasmine seem worried or upset recently?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’ Mrs Elliott heaved herself out of her chair, dropping ash onto the carpet.

  Hart told herself that the restlessness was a sign of the woman’s shock. ‘What about boyfriends?’ she asked.

  Mrs Elliott picked up an empty can and gave it a shake. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Maybe she mentioned a name?’

  ‘I . . . wouldn’t . . . know.’ The repetition and the deliberate spacing of the words conveyed her irritation.

  ‘She never spoke to you about her friends?’

  Mrs Elliott lost patience. ‘Jesus, are you thick, or wha’? I kicked her out.’

  ‘When?’ Hart asked.

  ‘I dunno.’

  ‘Recently?’ Foster asked, sounding dangerously pleasant.

  Mrs Elliott picked up another can. Shake, listen, replace. ‘Depends what you call recent.’ Hart doubted if Mrs Elliott paid much attention to seasons, months, days or weeks: her timekeeping was more likely to run in line with the opening and closing times of the local Bargain Booze.

  The woman found a cider bottle with a couple of swallows remaining and Hart saw something like happiness in her face. As she seated herself again, Foster’s hand snapped out and snatched the bottle from her fingers.

  ‘Hey!’ she protested.

  Foster held the bottle just out of reach. ‘When did you kick her out?’

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘Coupla years ago. And before you say anything’ — she pointed at Foster with the burnt stub of her cigarette — ‘I caught her with her hand in me purse.’

  ‘Two years ago, she’d be what age?’ Foster asked.

  ‘Underage,’ Hart said.

  Mrs Elliott stubbed out her cigarette and rummaged in her dressing gown pocket for the packet. ‘I done my duty — reported her to the social.’

  ‘You know she had a baby?’ Hart asked.

  ‘Oh, aye.’ The sneer on her face made Hart want to slap her. ‘She come round with it just after it was born.’

  It. ‘The baby’s missing,’ Hart said.

  ‘Well, I haven’t got it.’

  Hart bit her lip. ‘She’d recently moved into a new house,’ she said, unknowingly echoing Rickman’s words. ‘Maybe she was getting herself straight.’

  ‘People like her never get themselves straight,’ Mrs Elliott said. She might have been talking about herself.

  ‘You know the name of the baby’s father?’ Foster asked.

  ‘He done it, did he?’

  ‘The name,’ Foster said, and she looked from the bottle to his face, as if she was afraid he might swallow the contents himself, to spite her.

  ‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘Mark?’

  ‘Mark what?’ Foster said.

  ‘I dunno!’ she exclaimed. ‘Mark — she only ever called him Mark.’ She reached for the bottle and Foster gave it to her.

  ‘Do you have any letters, photographs or documents?’ Hart asked. ‘Anything that might help us?’

  Mrs Elliott took a dainty sip of cider from the bottle. ‘She left some pictures.’ She indicated the dusty mantelshelf with a lift of her chin. A clutter of empty cans, junk mail
and cigarette packets partly obscured a bright yellow wallet.

  Foster caught it up greedily. The seal was unbroken, and he looked at Mrs Elliott, seeking approval. She stared blankly at him. ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I’m not interested.’

  He glanced at Hart as he broke the seal, a mixture of puzzlement and wonder creasing his brow. ‘Jasmine and the baby,’ he said, shuffling through them. Hart tried not to think of Jasmine, seventeen years old, laying gifts at her mother’s feet, seeking approval from a woman who was incapable of feeling anything but resentment towards her.

  Mrs Elliott showed no interest. Instead, she tucked the bottle into a corner of the chair to free her hands to light a fresh cigarette.

  Hart saw something register in Foster’s face. ‘Sarge?’

  He took the last photo and held it up for Mrs Elliott to see. In the photograph, Jasmine seemed to be showing off a new tattoo, her left sleeve rolled up to reveal a black twist of thorns encircling her upper arm. The boyfriend stood next to her, his arm slung around her shoulders. His hair, like Jasmine’s, was dyed black. Jasmine stared straight into the camera, a defiant look in her blue eyes, her head on a tilt, but there was something pathetically vulnerable about her. Perhaps it was the fact that the lad was a foot taller than her, or perhaps it was the slight downturn of her mouth that made her look close to tears.

  Looking from Mrs Elliott’s ravaged face to the photograph, Hart struggled to see any likeness between this woman and the slight, willowy girl. Perhaps that was it — perhaps it was her daughter’s dissimilarity she hated.

  ‘Is this the boyfriend?’ Foster asked. ‘Is this Mark?’

  Mrs Elliott wafted the smoke away from her face with her free hand. ‘That’s him — long streak of piss.’

  Foster’s jaw clamped tight, as if he was biting back a retort. ‘Does the name Mark Davis mean anything?’

  Hart looked from Foster to the woman, but she knew better than to interrupt.

  Mrs Elliott raised one shoulder, let it fall. ‘Could be. I never really—’

  ‘Gave a shit,’ Foster finished for her.

  ‘Look,’ she said, ‘she was off her bloody head on crack, heroin — anything she could lay her thieving hands on. What was I supposed to do?’

  ‘She was just a kid — you were supposed to take care of her.’

  Hart expected another outburst, but Mrs Elliott surprised them both. She took a long pull on her cigarette, burning it down almost to the filter, her small eyes watching them through the smoke. ‘All her life it was, “I want this,” “Can I have that?” She took and took and took. Thieving when I wouldn’t give her what she wanted.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ Foster said. ‘You changed the locks after you kicked her out — called us lot out when she came asking for more.’

  Mrs Elliott stubbed her cigarette out, angrily, lighting another before the last wisp of smoke vanished. ‘You wanna try it yourself before you start criticising people,’ she said, at last a quiver of emotion in her voice, but this was self-pity, not sorrow for her daughter. ‘Well, if they’re expecting me to pay for the funeral, they’ve got no chance. I’m flat broke.’

  It wasn’t clear who ‘they’ were — presumably the nebulous people in authority that Mrs Elliott had blamed for her difficulties throughout her life.

  It fell to Hart to ask Mrs Elliott to formally identify her daughter. She was reluctant to ask the question — it seemed like the final insult to Jasmine that she should be claimed by the woman who had so emphatically disowned her. So it was almost a relief when Mrs Elliott said, ‘What d’you need me for? You’ve got her fingerprints, haven’t you? God knows she got herself arrested enough times.’

  Hart could see that Foster was close to meltdown. ‘Don’t you wanna know how she died?’ he asked.

  ‘You just said, didn’t you?’

  Hart saw two stripes of hot colour on Foster’s cheekbones. ‘She was cut,’ Foster said.

  ‘Sarge—’ Hart warned, but he went on.

  ‘Not stabbed,’ he said. ‘Cut — again and again, till she bled to death.’

  Hart stared at him in wide-eyed horror, but Mrs Elliott merely shrugged. ‘Like I said — I’m not interested.’ Nevertheless, Hart saw her eyes dart right and left.

  ‘Don’t bother getting up,’ Foster said. ‘We’ll see ourselves out.’ He slid the photo wallet into the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘You won’t mind if we take these.’

  ‘Do what you like,’ she said. ‘It’s what you bastards always do.’

  * * *

  ‘You know this Mark Davis?’ Hart asked at the car.

  ‘I know him.’

  Foster slid behind the wheel, and Hart fastened her seat belt. ‘Are you going to tell me?’

  Foster turned the ignition key and gunned the engine, winding the window wide before he drove off. ‘Let me drive a bit, get the stench of that rathole out of me lungs.’

  The drive from Smithdown Road to Edge Hill took less than five minutes. They were almost four minutes into the journey before Foster had calmed down enough to speak.

  ‘You know I was in a children’s home as a kid?’

  ‘Black Wood,’ Hart said. This surprising little nugget had emerged during an investigation they had worked on the previous spring.

  ‘Mark Davis spent some time there.’

  She nodded, not fully understanding. ‘The lad in the picture looks no more than twenty,’ she said. ‘You must have ten years on him.’ He didn’t try to haggle her down on the age difference. Another surprise.

  ‘Black Wood runs a mentoring project,’ he said. ‘I was Mark’s mentor for a year before he left care.’

  ‘That would be what — four years ago?’ He pulled up at the traffic lights at Durning Road and Hart stared at his profile. A muscle jumped in his jaw and she realised, not for the first time, that there was more to Lee Foster than his fondness for booze and women.

  ‘Fat lot of good I did him.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself for this,’ she said.

  He turned the corner. ‘Can’t absolve myself, neither.’

  Absolve? You can take the altar boy out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of the altar boy, she thought. If Foster knew that his blighted childhood and his conscience and his voluntary work were far more attractive than his famous fifty-megawatt smile, would he exploit them? She doubted it.

  He sensed her scrutiny. ‘What?’

  She wouldn’t for the world have mocked him about this, and she was relieved to see a diversion ahead in the form of a snarl of traffic. ‘Looks like the press have arrived.’

  A small crowd of reporters with TV and still cameras were clustered around the main entrance to Edge Hill Police Station and an assortment of media vans and private cars were parked either side of the road, their wheels half on the kerb, narrowing the roadway sufficiently to cause a bottleneck. Added to which, through-traffic was slowing to clock the reason for the gathering.

  ‘Think they’re here for us or DI Dwight’s mob?’ she asked.

  ‘Like shooting fish in a barrel,’ Foster said. ‘Two major investigations and they don’t even have to move their fat arses to chase the story.’

  A tea and burger van was parked on the pavement across the street and a queue had formed. Many of the reporters were in lightweight jackets or shirtsleeves, and there was a relaxed carnival atmosphere.

  ‘Makes you wanna pray for rain, doesn’t it?’ Foster said. He nosed the car forward through the bottleneck, seeking out the left turn into the rear of the station. A few yards on, they passed a uniformed officer, sweating in short sleeves, trying to move the traffic on. ‘What’s the score?’ Foster asked.

  ‘We’re expecting royalty, Sarge.’ He paused, distracted by sirens in the distance. An unmarked car approached from the opposite direction, lights flashing and siren whooping. ‘Looks like they’ve arrived.’ The queue at the van scattered and the less encumbered of the reporters fled like moths to the light.

&
nbsp; Foster and Hart got out of the car to watch the spectacle. For a moment, all they could see was the huddle of reporters and photographers around the car, but the crowd parted and they saw DS Cass in his best sports jacket and slacks, his right hand firmly on the elbow of a taller, powerfully built man.

  ‘Is that Rob Maitland?’ Hart asked.

  Foster nodded. ‘Cass is a total wanker. What’s wrong with using the back door, like everyone else?’

  ‘And miss a perfectly good photo op?’ Hart saw a sheen of Vaseline on Cass’s lower lip. ‘He must have topped up the lip balm before he got out of the car,’ she said. ‘And I’ll swear he’s had a haircut.’

  The reporters clamoured for a comment, and Maitland, handcuffed but proudly erect, stopped and turned.

  ‘He’s not gonna let him make a speech?’ Foster exclaimed.

  Cass raised his hand like a statesman. ‘Sorry, folks,’ he said. ‘This man is under arrest. He’s not at liberty to comment right now.’

  Cass no doubt thought that being on telly was good for his career. Being on telly taking a big-name villain like Rob Maitland into custody was even better. But Hart saw the look in Maitland’s eye. She knew Maitland’s type: on a slow burn, they had long memories and they never forgave.

  Chapter 8

  Rickman and Tunstall were in the CID Room, watching a video clip of Jasmine with her baby. Rickman nodded to Hart and Foster, and they took up station without speaking. Rickman knew his friend well enough to see that something was bothering him, but for now, he let it pass.

  On-screen, Jasmine handled her daughter with a tenderness that verged on reverence.

  ‘I can’t believe she’s mine,’ she whispered. Her ears still bristled with studs and rings, but the fierce defensiveness in the photograph was gone. She smiled into the camera, dimpling prettily.

  The baby stirred, her little fists coming up to her face, and Jasmine laughed softly, working one slender finger into her infant’s tiny fist. ‘Look at them nails,’ she said, her voice filled with tremulous awe. ‘Beautiful nails.’

  The picture blurred momentarily, then the camera came into focus on the baby’s curled fingers.