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

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘He wouldn’t come in.’ She stepped lightly down the stairs in her bare feet. ‘He was calm,’ she added, evidently following Rickman’s train of thought. ‘He asked me why I was here.’ She smiled, her mouth twisting in uncharacteristic bitterness. ‘Actually, he said, “Why are you even here?” I tried to talk to him, to explain to him about the legal situation.’

  Shit. Rickman remembered he had promised to find legal representation for Simon. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘“Anything to get you off my back.”’ Tanya looked more hurt than offended.

  Rickman took her hand. It felt cold. ‘Come and have a drink with me, we’ll talk about it.’

  She shook her head. ‘There’s no point, Jeff.’

  ‘Disinhibition,’ he explained. ‘It’s just another symptom of the brain damage. He doesn’t mean it—’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he does.’ She exhaled slowly, and when she spoke again, her voice wasn’t quite steady. ‘He just doesn’t know how to suppress the urge to say it.’

  Rickman wanted to tell her she was mistaken, but his lips wouldn’t form the lie. ‘God, Tanya, I’m so sorry.’ He drew her into his arms and embraced her. She rested her cheek against his shoulder for a moment, then gently disengaged herself.

  ‘The papers are with my British lawyers,’ she said. ‘I’ll pass on copies to you when they’ve finished the necessary amendments.’

  Chapter 24

  Consciousness came slowly. An awareness of the dark and of something not quite right. A noise? Lars Lindermann reached for his wife, a gesture of protection and reassurance. The sheets were cold. He listened — perhaps one of the children had woken her. Vicky would tend to them, but Kim couldn’t bear to think of Oliver and Leonie alone in the dark. She would go to comfort them, often sending the nanny back to bed, while she soothed the children to sleep.

  No sound.

  Lindermann swung out of bed, his long, bony feet seeking out the leather mules he wore as slippers. It was chilly and he shivered as he slipped on his dressing gown and padded along the landing to listen at the nursery door. All was quiet.

  Puzzled, he turned the corner to try Kim’s office door. The room was empty, the swatches of fabric she had been experimenting with earlier in the day lay abandoned on the sofa, along with her workbook.

  Lindermann leafed through her sketches and notes, marvelling at his wife’s imagination and versatility. As much at home with bold colours and flamboyant soft furnishings as she was with pastels and hard architectural lines, Kim had taken three identical apartments and created unique living spaces, each with its own mood and distinctive atmosphere.

  At times like this, his love for her took him by surprise, knocking the wind out of him. It was Kim’s exuberant creativity that had seduced him at the beginning, and she was still capable of taking him unawares — giving him an emotional dig in the ribs to remind him why he had first fallen for her.

  He replaced the sketchbook and tiptoed out of the office, afraid, almost, of disturbing the swirl of creative energy in the room.

  He found Kim in the TV room, sitting cross-legged on the floor, one of Leonie’s soft toys hugged to her chest. Her hair, almost black in the poor light, tumbled over her shoulders, partly obscuring her face, but he knew she was crying.

  Lindermann recognised Jasmine Elliott on the TV screen. ‘Perfect little nails,’ Jasmine said. ‘I’m never gonna let nothing bad happen to her. Never.’

  Kim rewound the recording and played it again. And again. Lars sat next to her and closed his hand gently over hers.

  ‘You’re freezing.’ He put his arm around her. The skin of her arms was marked with striations — faded pink parallel lines, some straight, as though drawn with a ruler, others in swirls and circles. The scars were almost invisible in this light, but he could feel them under his fingers, and though it pained him, he could never forget that they were there, nor what had been done to her.

  Kim turned from the TV screen, her startling green eyes magnified by tears. ‘She saved me, Lars,’ she said. ‘Why couldn’t I save her?’

  He folded her in his arms, and she buried her face in his neck, her tears burning his skin. ‘I should have saved her,’ she whispered.

  Chapter 25

  Friday

  Mist settled in the colder dips and pockets of Mossley Hill like the first damp breath of winter, as Rickman made his way to work early the next morning. A ground frost glistened on the pavements. Autumn was gathering momentum — the fiery reds and oranges of the maples and beeches in the leafier suburbs augured another iron-grey winter.

  The car park was emptying when he arrived at Edge Hill Police Station at seven fifteen. The Targeted Patrol Team were leaving for home and a few hours’ sleep. For CID, the day had not yet started.

  He skimmed the phone messages that had come in since the TV appeal — close to two hundred at a conservative estimate. He rapidly sorted the low-priority tasks into a separate pile, then checked his emails. CSC Tony Mayle had made a couple of findings that might prove useful. He printed the text and attachments from Mayle, then rummaged in his briefcase for his notebook to cross-check the PM results.

  ‘Well, you look like shite.’

  Rickman looked up from his work. Foster leaned against the door frame, Rickman suspected, more for support than effect. ‘You’re looking frayed around the edges yourself.’

  ‘It’s all relative, mate — and at least I enjoyed getting wrecked.’

  ‘Did you?’ He knew Foster too well to be fooled by the bravado and the banter.

  True to form, Foster looked ready to make a flippant remark, but then he shrugged. ‘Half a bottle of whisky watching crap on the box on your tod doesn’t strictly qualify as enjoyment, I’ll grant you that,’ he said. ‘But it got me pissed enough to pass out before the reruns of Kojak started, and that’s something to be thankful for.’

  Rickman was supposed to laugh — that would be the easy way past this difficult moment, but ignoring problems just drove them deeper, burrowing under the skin like a canker. ‘You couldn’t have prevented these deaths, Lee,’ he said.

  ‘Naomi said that, an’ all.’

  From the rueful look on his face Rickman guessed that Foster hadn’t reacted too kindly. He tilted his head. ‘Well, Naomi talks a lot of sense.’

  Foster sighed, giving up on the bravado. ‘Maybe I could’ve helped Mark adjust once he left care. Maybe I could’ve kept him away from drugs. Maybe I could even have prevented their deaths. Fact is, Jeff, I’ll never know.’

  Rickman could find no words of comfort, and after a short silence Foster cleared his throat. ‘So, how was the PM?’

  Rickman closed his eyes and got a flash, vivid as dreaming, of Bryony on the post-mortem table, the infant’s marble-white skin against cold, unforgiving steel. ‘Rough,’ he said.

  The room shifted sideways and he gave his head a shake, which only made him feel worse. ‘Let’s grab a coffee.’ He bundled together the phone slips, papers and his notebook and headed for the door. ‘The PM results threw us a few curve balls and I want you to hear them before the additional support staff arrive.’ He checked his watch — it was still only seven thirty, and they had worked late the previous night. ‘Ideally, I’d like Tunstall and Hart in on this.’

  ‘They’re already in, boss,’ Foster reassured him. ‘I saw Hart pull in to the car park as I got here.’

  Rickman noted that Foster hadn’t spoken to Hart. Whatever had happened during the course of their interviews the day before, it seemed they hadn’t yet resolved their differences.

  * * *

  Foster walked into the Incident Room ahead of Rickman and nodded a greeting to Tunstall and Hart. During his whisky-soaked broodings the previous night, he had tried to think of a way of making things right with Naomi. He had discounted flowers almost immediately — too patronising, and they might send the wrong message. He considered a straightforward apology — Maitland had got to him, he had lashed out at the nearest person,
and he regretted every word he’d said. Of course Naomi couldn’t understand what life was like in care, but it didn’t matter that she couldn’t understand, so long as she could sympathise. Perhaps that was the problem: Foster himself was as much a product of the care system as Mark Davis was. He didn’t mind if Hart thought him an idiot, a shallow flirt and a womaniser. But he couldn’t abide the thought of her seeing him as pathetic.

  So he did the only reasonable thing, under the circumstances — he went on as if nothing had happened, greeting Naomi with a neutral, ‘All right?’

  She responded with a wary, ‘Morning, Sarge.’

  Tunstall gave them both a bleary-eyed look. ‘You two’re a bright pair of little sunbeams this morning, aren’t you?’

  While Rickman set out his notes and the pink message slips, Tunstall moved to the tea table, looking like a large grazing animal in search of fresh pasture. ‘A nice cuppa’ll set us right.’

  ‘Make it quick — we need to focus,’ Rickman said. ‘You’ve seen the stack of phone messages from the TV coverage. There’ll be the usual cranks, crackpots and time-wasters, so they’ll need sifting, but I had a skim through and there’s also a number of potentially useful leads.’

  ‘Well I hope one of them’s got a plug on the end,’ Tunstall said mournfully, ‘’Cos I can’t get going without a decent brew.’ He held up the kettle, still with its chain attached. The electrical lead was missing.

  ‘Don’t tell me they’ve nicked it!’ Foster exclaimed.

  ‘What the hell has got into that lot?’ Rickman demanded.

  ‘All the excitement must’ve made them giddy,’ Foster said.

  Rickman lifted his chin, an invitation to him to explain.

  ‘A couple of kidnappings overnight,’ Foster said. ‘The victims were dumped at the Royal in the early hours. Had the shit kicked out of them.’

  ‘Whose mob?’ Rickman asked.

  ‘Nobody’s talking, but the victims have been identified as Maitland’s lads.’

  ‘Payback from the Birkenhead crew?’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking,’ Foster said. ‘It looks like Darren Nealy used his Saveaway tickets to Ferry ’Cross the Mersey and exact a bit of revenge for his brother’s arrest.’

  A hubbub of conversation drew the team’s attention to the open doorway.

  ‘DI Dwight’s called an early briefing,’ Foster said. ‘Trying to make up for all the brownie points he lost on Snowplough.’

  Thirty or more officers, some in plain clothes, some in uniform, trooped past their door into the drugs inquiry Major Incident Room, talking, coughing. It was too early for laughter.

  Rickman closed the door. ‘Lab results first,’ he said. ‘DNA from the vomit found at the scene of Jasmine’s murder belongs to Mark Davis. We already know there’s no DNA from vaginal swabs. No blood from Davis at the scene, but his fingerprints were found.’

  ‘I’ve said it before — why wear a condom and not gloves?’ Foster asked of nobody in particular.

  ‘On that subject, Ed Shepherd’s prints were found on the padlock on the coach house front door.’

  Foster thought for a moment. ‘Ed used to do regular checks — they were terrified someone’d get trapped down there.’ He realised what he’d said and gave his head a shake.

  ‘We need to ask, anyway,’ Rickman said. ‘COD on the infant was respiratory failure. Tox screen results have come through as well — they found morphine.’

  ‘In the baby’s blood?’ Foster said.

  ‘Jasmine was back on the drugs?’ Hart asked.

  ‘No,’ Rickman said. ‘Jasmine’s blood was clear — except for traces of Rohypnol.’

  ‘The date rape drug?’ Tunstall said.

  Hart exhaled. ‘That’s why nobody heard anything — he kept her subdued with roofies.’

  ‘Dr Griffith thinks it was administered in carefully measured amounts, so that she was aware, but unable to put up much of a struggle.’

  ‘Bastard,’ Foster muttered.

  ‘What about Jasmine and Mark?’ Hart asked.

  ‘Mark was subjected to a prolonged attack.’

  ‘Mark was attacked?’

  ‘It looks like it,’ Rickman said.

  Tunstall chipped in. ‘He was buried under a ton of rubble — couldn’t that’ve caused the damage?’

  ‘He had a broken nose, a fracture to his cheekbone, and a shattered pelvis,’ Rickman said, trying to block the details of what he’d seen from his mind. ‘But Griffith couldn’t state with absolute certainty that those injuries were caused by anything other than an accident.’

  Rickman handed out photographs from Tony Mayle’s message. ‘You’re looking at blood spatter on the walls and some pooling on the basement floor of the coach house. It was displaced from the final position of Mark’s body. There was so much rubble overlaying it, they missed it at first.’

  Foster angled the printout of one of the walls, tilting it to the light. The black-and-white image wasn’t entirely clear, but the pattern of spatter gave him a sudden jolt. ‘Cast-off?’ he asked.

  Rickman nodded, and Tunstall crowded Foster to get a look at the image. Hart looked across and Foster handed her the photo. She took it with a polite, ‘Thank you,’ and studied it more closely than the subject matter warranted.

  ‘So far — and they’ve only been able to do preliminary tests — all the blood is Mark Davis’s,’ Rickman said, glancing from Hart to Foster, a slight frown on his face. ‘However, he did find multiple wounds — slashes and superficial stabbings.’

  ‘That sounds familiar.’ Foster’s heart thudded with suppressed excitement.

  ‘Not identical to Jasmine’s injuries,’ Rickman cautioned. He handed out the post-mortem photographs as if to spare himself the need of describing the difference. ‘Some of the shallower, parallel cuts bear a striking resemblance to the wounds on Jasmine’s body. Dr Griffith says Jasmine was tortured with intense control and precision. Mark—’ Again, he seemed at a loss for words. ‘Well, Mark wasn’t.’

  ‘Less control,’ Hart said. ‘So whoever killed Mark was in a rage?’

  ‘Could be,’ Rickman said. ‘Griffith would only say that some of the wounds required “considerable force”.’

  Tunstall seemed to let all this pass him by, his thought processes several synapses behind the majority. ‘I don’t want to sound silly,’ he said, his face screwed up in concentration, ‘but d’you get cast-off from suicide stabbings? I mean, is it possible Mark killed himself — out of remorse, like?’

  ‘For blood spatter, the arc of the swing would have to be big enough to get some momentum behind it,’ Rickman explained. ‘Typically, cuts from self-harm are tentative. The knife is held close to the body, so you wouldn’t expect to see cast-off.’ Tunstall took a breath as a preliminary to another question, but Rickman forestalled him. ‘Just so we’re clear,’ he said. ‘Dr Griffith thinks that Mark was murdered.’

  Foster suppressed an eyeroll. He was learning that Tunstall had his strengths — quick thinking just wasn’t one of them.

  ‘Did they find any blood from the baby?’ he asked.

  Rickman shook his head.

  Hart spoke up, tapping her notepad to emphasise the point. ‘A moment ago, you said, “All the blood is Mark’s so far.” Does that mean they’re expecting to find somebody else’s?’

  ‘Scientific Support found blood on a wood splinter from the staircase,’ Rickman said, and Foster saw a smile of approval touch the corners of his mouth. ‘It’s a tiny amount, and it’s been contaminated with plaster and brick dust, but the lab’s doing what it can. Could take a while.’

  ‘So, either Mark killed Jasmine and someone caught up with him—’

  ‘Or,’ Foster interrupted, flipping through the blood spatter photos and staring at the slight differences in pattern and angle like they were a cartoon animation, ‘Mark found Jasmine dead, rescued Bryony, made a run for it and . . .’

  ‘Someone caught up with him,’ Hart finished for him.<
br />
  ‘Maitland?’ Foster asked.

  ‘He’s the most dangerous man Mark or Jasmine knew,’ Rickman said. ‘He certainly had reason to come after Mark. And for what it’s worth, I’m with you on this, Lee — I don’t think Mark killed Jasmine.’

  Chapter 26

  He carries a scalpel with him at all times. He’d tried a craft knife in the early days, but the tiny serrations at the edge of the blades tore rather than cut the flesh. Such wounds don’t heal so well, and the scars are untidy, ugly. After several exploratory sessions, he’d he settled on the Swann-Morton disposable — he had even tried it on himself once, to feel what it was like. It was like nothing he had ever experienced. The pain was acute, intense, hot. The sight of his blood seeping from the wound had alarmed him: he was fearful it wouldn’t stop, that his life, his energy would flow out of him unchecked. Panicked, he’d bound the wound tight and waited, counting the fevered minutes until the wadding came away dry. He didn’t care to repeat the experiment.

  In contrast, the girls’ blood excites him. Each incision gapes infinitesimally, like lips responding to the angel kisses of his scalpel. He knows precisely how deep to cut, how much pressure to apply with clean gauze before administering the next. He creates symmetry — finds the beauty underlying the blandness of unadorned flesh.

  A psychologist would no doubt say that his artwork was about control, power. They would be wrong. It’s not the girls’ powerlessness that excites him, it’s their submissiveness. It’s true, there is a sexual charge in watching their faces as he hurts them. Their fear is exciting, and their pain sends bolts of energy through him, so that every nerve ending feels juiced with electrical charge. But it is the girls’ passivity, their willingness to give themselves to him, that is most seductive. He hasn’t the insight to understand that their submission conveys power to him.

  Chapter 27

  A sudden burst of noise from the corridor roused Foster from a study of the hotline messages. It seemed that the drugs team in the Major Incident Room next door were playing a video recording. The hallway reverberated with the sound of revving engines and the scream of brakes, overlaid with a commentary typical of police pursuit.