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

by MARGARET MURPHY

  Cass shrugged. ‘He says not.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked.’ Rickman hardened his voice. ‘Do I need to simplify the question, Sergeant?’

  ‘No,’ Cass said. Then, with an embarrassed glance at Hart, ‘No, sir.’

  Rickman knew that cost the sergeant dearly. He waited, allowing the tension in the room to build.

  ‘He’s in shock,’ Cass said. ‘It might be worth having another word.’

  He’s covering his back, Rickman thought. In case somebody else gets more out of Eames than he did.

  ‘Make sure you do,’ Maynard said, leaving a few seconds to emphasise the point before changing direction. ‘So, what was a nice middle-class boy like Aldiss doing with the likes of Thomas “the Tank” Eames?’

  Dwight belatedly realised that this was his cue to come in. Flustered, he began sifting through the document wallets and folders on the desk in front of him. ‘I’ve been pretty tied up . . .’

  Cass watched, prolonging the agony a moment longer. ‘The blue folder, guv,’ he said, at last, risking a sly glance at a few of his cronies. ‘You were at your three o’clock.’ He managed to make it sound like it was in quotation marks. ‘I put together the key points, so you know what we’ve been doing.’ The emphasis on ‘we’ was so slight that, if it hadn’t been for the tension in the room, you would have missed it.

  Dwight fumbled the folder open and skimmed its contents. He kept running his hands through his hair. It was trimmed so close, the curls so tight, that he still looked neat, but Rickman was close enough to see the sweat on Dwight’s pale skin and felt impotent rage coming off him in waves.

  ‘Eames is known to be a key member of Maitland’s gang,’ Dwight said. He cleared his throat, recalling that this information was already common knowledge, at least to his own team, and added, ‘For the benefit of DCI Rickman’s crew.’

  The savage smile on Cass’s face confirmed his contempt of his superior, and Dwight’s unwillingness to meet the sergeant’s gaze confirmed that the balance of power, never much in Dwight’s favour, was swinging even more towards Cass.

  Reading from Cass’s notes, Dwight continued, ‘The victim — Mr, um—’

  ‘Aldiss.’ Cass drew out the sibilant.

  ‘Aldiss, yes.’ Dwight made a foolish attempt to disguise the fact that he was reading from Cass’s notes. ‘Michael Aldiss was on a job interview for a manager’s post supervising a number of coffee bars across Liverpool and Lancs. He and Eames were on a tour of the outlets he would manage. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ This last sentence was inflected as a question, and Rickman was dismayed that the only brief eye contact he made was with Cass, apparently seeking his confirmation — or worse, his approval.

  ‘A young man with dreams and ambitions,’ Superintendent Maynard reminded them. ‘Practically a saint, in the eyes of the press. So, DI Dwight will be talking to the media after this briefing. He’ll tell them that we will maintain a strong police presence in the city centre and in Toxteth, where most of the gang-related attacks have taken place.’

  By ‘them’, Rickman took Maynard to mean the media, rather than the public. Rickman knew Toxteth well, and a heightened police presence, far from giving pause to the crooks and the dealers, was likely to arouse their indignation. Unless the situation was handled sensitively, it could increase the threat to the law-abiding in the community. But Maynard cared most about public opinion, as represented by the press and TV news. Foster’s reassignment to the drugs case was concrete proof of that.

  ‘You’ll be wondering why I’ve called a joint briefing,’ Maynard went on. ‘An unexpected link has emerged between the arrests made on Monday during Operation Snowplough, and the murder of Mark Davis. DCI Rickman will explain.’

  Rickman outlined their findings so far, then fixed his gaze on DS Cass. ‘Intelligence passed on from the drugs team to my officers indicated that Mark Davis was not at the drugs raid. It now seems very likely that he was there during Operation Snowplough, and that he stole the missing money and drugs.’

  There was a ripple of concern among Dwight’s crew.

  Good — their investigation so far had been a dog’s breakfast — but Rickman’s intention was to give them a timely boot up the backside, not to alienate them entirely. ‘Water under the bridge.’ He sought out three or four faces to focus on briefly as a token that he was including them all. ‘But with this new information, you might want to rethink the events of the last few days.’ He saw a few nods. ‘If you have any information about Mark Davis, or his relationship with Maitland, now’s the time to say.’

  He turned his attention again to Cass — it troubled him that the sergeant had given Naomi bad information. It troubled him far more that Maitland had backed up Cass’s evaluation of Mark Davis’s place in the firm, when every indication on the street was that Mark had played a central role up until the night of the drugs raid. He did wonder if Cass had been protecting Davis as a source, but a check on the register of informants failed to bring up Davis’s name. Cass stared blankly back at him.

  ‘If you prefer to come to me or DI Dwight in private, that’s okay. If you’ve taken an unorthodox approach, bent the rules a bit, it’s best you tell us now, rather than us discovering it later.’ He maintained eye contact with Cass for one more second, then nodded — to let Cass know that he had the measure of him, and to signal that the matter was far from closed.

  Maynard opened the floor. ‘Ideas, observations, suggestions?’

  ‘Daft question, sir?’

  Chris Tunstall. Rickman might have known that he would be the first to put his head above the parapet.

  ‘Ask it,’ Maynard said.

  ‘I were just wondering, like — chucking a lad off a roof, it’s a bit . . .’ He struggled for the right word. ‘Extreme.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Maynard said. ‘And your question?’

  Tunstall shrugged his huge shoulders. ‘I was wondering — what did they want?’

  ‘To see if he’d bounce?’

  The comment was muttered, and Maynard evidently missed it, but Rickman narrowed it down to either a DC whose name he didn’t know or DS Cass. Since the DC looked horrified to be under scrutiny, Rickman’s money was on the sergeant.

  Tunstall reddened and seemed flustered, and Hart intervened.

  ‘They threw the victim off a roof, but they didn’t touch Eames,’ she said. ‘Why? If this was a rival gang — let’s say the Nealy brothers, for the sake of argument — why would they kill a bystander? From what we’ve just been told, Eames must be near the top of Maitland’s management. You want to strike at the heart of the organisation, it’d make more sense to kill Eames, wouldn’t it?’ She looked straight ahead, but there was no doubt the heat in her reply was directed at Cass. ‘But they murdered a kid who wasn’t even on the payroll. Seems perverse, doesn’t it?’ The question was rhetorical.

  Maynard nodded. ‘Well, Chris, we could do with a few more “daft” questions like that one.’ Tunstall had recovered his composure and was trying not to look smug. ‘And you, Constable . . .’

  ‘Naomi Hart, sir,’ she answered, smartly.

  ‘It’s nice to know we’ve got people thinking instead of just reacting.’

  ‘All the attacks so far have been at street level,’ Dwight said, trying to regain some ground for his team. ‘Maybe this was the first time they’d got so close to the management, bottled out at the last minute.’

  ‘They dropped Michael Aldiss sixty feet to his death,’ Rickman said. ‘I’d need convincing they “bottled out”.’

  ‘Kyle Nealy’s locked up, and he’s got three of the four brain cells God gifted the Nealy boys. I just don’t see little bruv Darren switching from baseball bats and machetes to this,’ Cass said, evidently torn between chagrin at finding himself in agreement with Rickman and spiteful glee at wrong-footing Dwight once again. ‘And they got clean away.’

  ‘You have a theory?’ Maynard asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Cass gl
anced at his team leader, and Dwight flushed, leafing a little too eagerly through his notes in an effort to find this little nugget of information.

  Cass looked away from him with a sardonic smile. ‘New player, new tactics.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Dwight said, clearly wishing he’d said it himself. ‘That’s it. New player. Well done, Dan.’ If he saw the sneer on Cass’s face, he didn’t acknowledge it.

  Rickman was less impressed. This was the first positive contribution DS Cass had made to the briefing, and he viewed it with suspicion. ‘Is Maitland’s empire really so vulnerable?’ He addressed his question to Cass’s boss.

  ‘Um,’ Dwight said. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

  ‘Challenges from two rival firms in a matter of days?’ Rickman said. ‘I got the feeling Maitland had tight control of his turf.’

  Dwight looked to Cass for an answer, but his sergeant shrugged, making it clear he didn’t care either way.

  Dwight coughed, looking down at his notepad, then muttered, ‘We’ll look into it.’

  ‘If we have another firm to worry about, I want to know. And soon,’ Maynard said. ‘This is a public safety issue — I want full cooperation between the two inquiries, and I want a clampdown on drug-related crime. These people need to know we will not tolerate a drugs war being waged on the streets of Liverpool.’

  The briefing was concluded after allocation of tasks and responsibilities, and Rickman saw Cass lean over to Hart and say something. She stiffened, then stood slowly, speaking in a clear, deliberate tone.

  ‘You know, you’re like a little boy who torments the girls because he’s desperate for them to notice him. And terrified he won’t know how to act if they do.’

  Anger flared in Cass’s face. Then, unexpectedly, he smiled. ‘Don’t be like that, gorgeous.’ Despite the smile, his flat grey eyes held no humour.

  Foster stepped up, his face devoid of all emotion. Rickman had seen that look on Foster’s face before, and it meant trouble. He nodded at something Dwight said, sidestepping him, already skirting the table.

  Foster squared his shoulders.

  ‘Lee.’

  Foster didn’t reply to Rickman, but he didn’t launch into Cass, either.

  ‘We need to talk about liaison,’ Rickman said.

  ‘Be right with you,’ Foster said, still with his back to Rickman.

  ‘Now.’ Rickman put an edge into his voice.

  ‘Better run along then,’ Cass said.

  Rickman could hear the venom in Cass’s voice. But it was Cass who backed away — backed and turned and left the forum, creating extra noise in the corridor to make up for the loss of face in the stand-off with Foster.

  As Hart walked past him, Rickman said, ‘What was that about?’

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ she said, making a move to carry on.

  ‘Naomi.’

  Hart glanced at her watch. ‘I should be at the mortuary, boss,’ she said. ‘Mrs Lindermann’s identification of Jasmine — I’m already late . . .’

  Rickman let her go, and finally, it was just him and Foster.

  ‘Lee?’

  Foster shrugged. ‘Just Dank Ass looking for a slap.’

  Rickman looked into his friend’s face. ‘Naomi can sort out an idiot like Cass,’ he said.

  Foster smiled. ‘I know — she’s been sorting me out for the past year, hasn’t she?’ He shook his head. ‘I know I’m a pain in the arse, but the difference between me and Cass is I like women. And for what it’s worth, Naomi shouldn’t have to sort out knobheads like Cass.’

  He’s right, Rickman thought, watching his friend walk out of the room. Hart shouldn’t have to put up with it or sort it out. Men like Cass sought power over women to bolster their fragile egos. They shouldn’t be allowed that kind of power. He wondered how far a man like Cass would have to be pushed to go over the edge. To escalate from mere brutishness to the terrible excesses perpetrated by the monster who had murdered Jasmine Elliott.

  Chapter 35

  His early childhood was glorious. He was the sun, moon and stars of his mother’s universe, the centre of her world and core of creation. His father demanded little of him, beyond good behaviour and pleasant manners in adult company. He’d conformed willingly, for his father was strong and tall — a sportsman — a man whom other men sought out for wise counsel. They would listen and nod their heads as if to say, ‘Yes, that’s how it is — we were sure you would know what to do.’ As a boy, he’d wanted to grow up to be a man like his father.

  His mother determined that he would not suffer the privations that had proscribed her young life: what the boy wanted, he was given. When he spoke over his mother’s conversation, he wasn’t ‘demanding’, he was ‘lively’. Wayward behaviour was the outward sign of an unconventional — a unique — personality. Spiteful and destructive acts were redefined as high spirits or experiments resulting from an inquisitive, exceptionally bright mind. His mother protected him from his father’s disapproval and nurtured his individuality.

  When once a close friend tentatively asked if his behaviour was quite normal, his mother had scoffed. ‘Normal? What’s normal? “Normal” is the boring lives we lead.’ Normal was ordinary, and her son was beyond the limitations of the ordinary. He was extra-ordinary.

  Since his mother’s love was, in the absolute sense, unconditional and wholly uncritical, why should he care about public opinion? Certain — not merely of his mother’s love, but of her adoration — and freed from the restrictions of societal norms, he had learned to act without compunction or conscience.

  The first major blow to his ego came with the installation of an infant into his home. He was seven years old and had returned from school with a special treat for his mother: a painting of him holding her hand, standing next to the house. His father was there, too, though some way off, and much taller than either he or his mother. It was a beautiful painting. Miss Dent said so — and she had given him a gold star.

  It was cold, he remembered, but the house was super warm, so it felt like being wrapped up in a big fluffy blanket when he stepped through the door. A neighbour had walked him from school with her children because his mother had been unwell. His present to her had been carefully painted, dried in front of the classroom radiator and carried home unfolded to keep it nice, to cheer her up.

  He’d run full pelt into the kitchen, shouting her name, clutching the picture. ‘Look what I did for you!’

  ‘Put it on the table, love. I’ll look at it later,’ she’d said. ‘Come and say hello to your new baby brother.’ Like his painting was unimportant — something that could wait. But more chilling was the way she looked at the infant on her lap — because it was the way she used to look at him. All her attention from that moment seemed absorbed by the wailing child.

  It was never silent, never satisfied. It woke them up in the night to be fed, it stank, it screamed. In later life, rational and mature, he still resented the way it messed up the neat orderliness of his house, the pattern of his life, the status quo in which his mother’s affections and his father’s approval were his alone.

  He had refused to look at the baby, refused to use its name. He’d sung loudly the carols they were learning for the nativity play at school, but his mother hushed him and shooed him away, afraid he would wake the baby.

  The house, so warm on the day the baby arrived, was kept suffocatingly hot for the squalling brat. He flung open doors so that she would have to get up and close them again. He crashed in on the cooing circle when his aunts came to visit, climbing onto their knees and demanding hugs. He blew raspberries when they asked about his little brother and pinched the infant when he was offered the chance to hold it. His mother bore it all, seeing how he suffered, but his father would eventually lose patience and send him out of the room.

  Hurt and bewildered, he withdrew, becoming silent and sad. He regressed, wetting the bed and screaming himself awake from nightmares. He wanted his mother, but his father came instead. Where his mother w
ould soothe and reassure, his father would ‘deal with it’, his nose wrinkled in disgust, pulling the boy’s pyjama bottoms down unceremoniously, and rummaging through the dresser for a pair of underpants he could wear till morning. Then his father would drag the wet sheets off the mattress and replace them with fresh without even looking at his son.

  The boy who had been a supernova in his parents’ lives was now little more than a dark star — neutral, shrunk, dull. He wasn’t allowed in his parents’ bed because of the baby, so he would have to climb back into his own cold bed and stare at the light in the hall to keep the monsters at bay.

  His depression didn’t last long — he had been used to attention and he would not give it up so easily. Fists curled tightly around a red crayon, he crawled under the dining table and wrote his name again and again. But nobody saw it, so he searched through his father’s tool box and found a sharp knife, one with a small hook at the end that was good for gouging the wood of his bedroom door, the banister, the table legs. They noticed him then.

  It was a relief when the baby died. It seemed that justice had been done, the creature that had diminished him in his mother’s eyes had been punished.

  His mother was withdrawn and quiet for a long time, but eventually, with tentative, shamefaced looks, she began to pay him attention again, wanted to take him on her lap, like he was a baby. But he’d kicked against that — literally kicked — he wasn’t going to act as replacement for his replacement. For a time, he rebuffed every advance, pushed away every affectionate caress, wiped her kisses from his cheek, refused the presents and special treats, angry beyond rage that she should think him so easily bought. Her attentions became more lavish and desperate, and when his father added his voice to the cajoling, he yielded, begrudgingly at first, somewhat persuaded that he once more fully occupied their hearts and souls and minds.

  But from that time, he would constantly monitor his parents’ emotions and their reactions. He’d learned to manipulate as well as demand. It became a habit that persisted into adulthood, sharply attentive to any possible slight, not always acting on them, but not forgetting either. And he never lost the compulsion to mark.