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

by MARGARET MURPHY

  ‘Gormley was on duty,’ Rickman said. ‘I know that. What I don’t know is why either of you saw fit to change the duty rota without permission.’

  ‘He said he’d been called away by DS Cass, boss. Said it was an emergency.’

  ‘I’ll bet it was.’ He might have known Cass was behind this — payback for his reprimand over his sloppy work or taking a gamble on playing the hero, bringing Carter in. But Rickman had seen Jasmine’s body, had watched Dr Griffith perform the post-mortem on Mark Davies, had listened to Kim Lindermann describe what Carter had done to her. Carter was every bit as dangerous as Maitland. More dangerous because he seemed so harmless.

  Rickman glanced at the monitor. ‘I’ll need a copy of everything from for the last three hours. Stick it on a thumb drive.’

  The constable stared at him blankly.

  ‘Now would be good,’ Rickman said.

  The man fumbled for a memory stick and began highlighting and copying files. Moments later, Rickman passed the thumb drive to Hart and she was out of the door and running. The officer shrugged his shoulders apologetically.

  ‘Put your headphones back on,’ Rickman said. ‘And drink the damn coffee.’

  When he got back to the Incident Room, Kirkbride was on his mobile. ‘Anything?’ Rickman asked.

  Kirkbride looked at him, round-eyed and fearful. ‘They’re not answering, boss.’

  ‘Call DS Cass.’

  Kirkbride’s distress increased. ‘DI Dwight was trying to reach him all morning, sir. He—’

  ‘Call him,’ Rickman said. Moments later, Hart appeared at the door, her face pale and grim.

  ‘I’ve had a listen, and something weird’s going on here, boss.’ She placed a printout of the list of audio files on the desk in front of him and pointed to the first file name. ‘This set of files logs calls from 07:00 hours to 13:00 hours. And this one runs from 14:30 hours. There’s no audio in between.’

  An hour and a half of telephone surveillance was unaccounted for. ‘It looks like our visit to Mrs Carter had the desired effect,’ Rickman said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Hart agreed. ‘What’s the bet she called hubby before we’d even pulled out of the driveway?’

  He glanced at Kirkbride. ‘Have you heard from Cass yet?’

  ‘He’s still not answering, sir.’ Kirkbride’s voice was tremulous, his round face as red as a match head.

  Rickman snatched up a phone handset from the nearest desk and keyed the extension for the surveillance room. ‘When did Gormley call you in?’ he asked.

  ‘Um, two o’ clock, boss.’ He sounded wide awake now.

  Rickman muttered a curse and hung up.

  ‘Gormley, Williams and Smith left just after two p.m.,’ he said. ‘Maitland has a forty-five-minute start on them. They’re walking into a bloodbath, Naomi.’

  ‘D’you want me to trawl right through the recordings?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Give them to Kirkbride — Gormley probably took anything of interest, but it’s worth checking. I want you to call Mrs Carter. Tell her if she ever wants to see her husband alive again, she needs to tell us where he is.’

  He took out his mobile, dialling the number for the Armed Response Unit as he spoke: there wasn’t much he could tell them right now, but he could at least put them on alert. His next call was to DS Maynard. ‘I need to know if Carter was the informant on Operation Snowplough.’

  ‘Jeff,’ Maynard said in a tone of weary admonishment, ‘we went through this less than an hour ago. I told you that I would inform Customs of your concerns, and I have done.’

  ‘Sir, Carter is now our prime suspect in the murders of Jasmine Elliott and Mark Davis and the manslaughter of Bryony Elliott.’

  ‘You made all of this clear in our earlier discussion, and I put all of the facts to them,’ Maynard said. ‘But the evidence is circumstantial.’

  ‘If Customs knows where he is, they need to tell us now,’ Rickman insisted, raising his voice over Maynard’s continued protestations. ‘Maitland left Liverpool with half an army. He’s had nearly two hours start on us. DS Cass is unreachable, and my guess is he’s leading three other officers into a gun battle.’

  Maynard muttered a curse. When he spoke again, he sounded not only weary but old. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Carter was the informant. He fell off the radar just after seven p.m. on Thursday.’

  Just after the North West Newsbrief special, Rickman thought. Just after Maitland found out that Mark hadn’t escaped with his money, because by then, Mark was dead.

  ‘I’ll get onto Customs now,’ Maynard continued. ‘Tell them they need to let us know immediately if he gets in touch.’

  Rickman broke the connection and scrolled down his mobile contacts list as he walked down to his own MIR. A couple of civilian staff were working the hotline at the far end of the room, but the only CID present were Foster, seated at one desk, and Hart at another. She looked up as he came in, her ice-blue eyes darkened by worry. ‘No answer from the Carter home, sir.’

  ‘Where’s she based?’

  ‘Grassendale.’

  This was an exclusive, eighteenth-century, gated riverside development at the south end of the city.

  ‘Get on to the area inspector — ask him to send a couple of uniforms to wait at the house.’ A muscle twitched in his jaw. ‘Tell them to bring her in if she won’t cooperate.’

  ‘No luck with Customs?’ Foster asked, covering the mouthpiece as he spoke.

  ‘They lost Carter on Thursday night,’ Rickman said.

  Foster cursed. ‘So that’s it. All we can do now is wait.’

  But Rickman was sick of waiting. ‘There’s one more avenue I can try.’

  Foster spoke into the phone. ‘Get here as soon as.’ He hung up. ‘You’re not thinking about calling Eames?’ he demanded. ‘Jeff, think about it — if Maitland knows where Carter is, he probably got it from Tommy Eames. Tommy could’ve told us, but he didn’t. I don’t think he ever intended to — he’d rather take his chances with Maitland. I’ll bet he only came to us in case he couldn’t get Carter’s address and needed a safe place for a bit. And if he is in touch with Maitland, you’d be warning him our lads are on the way.’

  Rickman’s finger hovered over the dial key. ‘With any luck, Maitland will clear out, rather than risk a confrontation with the police.’

  ‘Since when did we have any luck on this case?’ Foster said.

  ‘We’ve no location and no means of contacting Cass or the officers with him,’ Rickman said. ‘Eames is our only link to Carter. What choice do I have, Lee?’

  Foster stared at him for several long seconds. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Do what you have to do.’

  Rickman hit the key. ‘Tommy Eames?’ There was no response, but Rickman thought he heard traffic noise. ‘Tommy, this is DCI Jeff Rickman.’

  ‘I know who it is,’ Eames’s voice rasped back. ‘You’re on my contacts list. Every time you ring, a little picture of a pig flashes up to remind me what you look like.’

  Arrogance or bravado? Had Tommy made his peace with Maitland, or did he feel he was far enough away to be out of danger? Either way, he evidently felt that Rickman no longer had anything to offer.

  ‘I thought we had an understanding,’ Rickman said.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re on about.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Rickman said. ‘I’m not taping our conversation. I need your help.’

  Eames made a short sound — a cough or a laugh. ‘Forget it, Rickman. I’m off the hook, now. All debts settled.’

  ‘So why are you running, Tommy?’ There was a silence, except for the steady hum in the background. Traffic, Rickman thought. Definitely traffic.

  ‘What d’you want anyway?’ Eames asked.

  ‘Carter’s address.’

  ‘How would I know that?’

  ‘Maitland thought you’d know it. Now Maitland is missing — I think he’s gone after Carter.’ Eames said nothing. ‘You said it yourself, Tommy. All debts
settled.’

  ‘Let’s say, for the sake of argument, you’re right. Why would I wanna piss off Mr Maitland all over again by feeding you information?’

  ‘You think he’s really forgiven you, Tommy? Because that’s wishful thinking. Maitland is the type who never forgives, never forgets,’ Rickman said. ‘He expects loyalty, and what you did was anything but.’

  ‘I never done nothing.’

  Rickman had expected a denial, but Eames sounded defensive enough to convince him he was on the right track. ‘You did nothing? You expect me to believe that? Maitland killed Michael Aldiss just so you would know how disappointed he was in you.’

  ‘No,’ Eames said. ‘No — I told you — Graham never accused me of nothing. He just asked where Carter was.’

  ‘And why would he think that you, of all people, would know where Carter would hide out?’

  ‘I told you, we worked together on Rob’s legit business interests.’

  ‘Carter is on the run from Rob Maitland, Tommy. Why would Maitland think he’d trust you enough to tell you where he was holed up?’ Rickman saw Lee Foster and Naomi Hart watching him avidly. Even hearing only one side of the conversation, they clearly felt that he was on to something. Rickman felt a spurt of excitement.

  ‘You and Carter made a deal.’ It had to be, he thought. Maitland’s assets are tied up in business and stock — legitimate and illegitimate — Carter would need someone to facilitate the realisation of those assets.

  Eames remained stubbornly silent.

  ‘You made a deal, and Maitland found out about it.’

  ‘You’re pissing in the wind, Rickman.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Tommy. If Carter had got Maitland out of the way, you’d take a bigger cut from the coffee houses.’

  ‘Now why would Bernie the Books do that for me?’

  ‘Same reason he came to you five years ago, when you were running a failing coffee chain — only this time, instead of laundering drugs money, he’d be siphoning cash through your books to off-shore accounts in his own name. Fake refurbs, new shops that existed only on paper. He’d have his retirement fund set up in no time.’

  Foster grinned, appreciating the simple logic in his reasoning, and Hart nodded her agreement.

  ‘You’re in the wrong business, Mr Rickman,’ Eames said. ‘You’ve got a bent mind.’

  ‘Think on this, Tommy,’ Rickman said. ‘Carter is bound to have his own protection. If Maitland has gone after him, it’s anyone’s guess who’ll come out of it alive.’ Eames stayed silent, and Rickman hammered the point home. ‘Like I said, Maitland isn’t a man to forgive and forget — if he survives, he’ll come looking for you. On the other hand, if Carter’s the one who walks away, it won’t take him long to work out that it was you who turned him over to Maitland. Either way, you’re screwed.’

  The silence continued a moment. Eames’s breathing was heavy and had an odd catch in it. His cracked ribs, giving him hell, Rickman thought. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’m just trying to straighten out a mess here.’ Honesty might work where threats hadn’t. ‘Help me, I’ll see you get protection.’

  Eames answered with a snort.

  ‘Police are on their way out to wherever it is Carter’s holed up,’ Rickman went on. ‘Only they’re going in half-arsed — you see, they don’t know Maitland like you do.’

  ‘Maybe you should tell them.’

  ‘I wish I could.’

  Another silence. ‘You lost your own surveillance team?’

  Rickman ignored the question. ‘You do know where he is, don’t you?’

  Eames didn’t answer.

  ‘Help me,’ Rickman said.

  ‘You know what your lot come up with?’ Eames said — meaning Crimestoppers, witness relocation. ‘A shitty flat on a sink estate in Leeds.’

  Oh, hell. That explained everything — Tommy had decided to take his chances with Maitland, rather than die a slow death in a grey inner-city slum. Rickman couldn’t say he blamed him. ‘Tommy—’

  But Eames wasn’t in the mood to listen. He raised his voice, almost shouting down the line. ‘Have you seen my house? It’s a five-bed Edwardian villa on the edge of Calderstones. So, you tell me — are your lads having a laugh or what?’

  ‘I’ll talk to them,’ Rickman said. ‘I’ll get you a European relocation.’

  ‘I thought there wasn’t no guarantees.’ Eames was no fool, he knew the system.

  ‘This is different,’ Rickman lied. ‘You’d be saving cops’ lives — I could make it happen.’

  ‘On my side of the fence,’ Eames said, ‘“saving cops’ lives” is a sure way to getting kneecapped.’

  So much for appealing to his better instincts. ‘Okay, Tommy, here’s what will happen,’ Rickman said. ‘A police officer — maybe more than one — will get themselves killed. And when they do, it won’t be Maitland or Carter you’ll have to look out for, it’ll be me. Because I will find you, and I’ll charge you with obstruction and conspiracy to murder — and that’s before I even get started on your money laundering activities.’

  ‘You can’t do that! I’m the victim here!’ Eames’s voice, coarsened by chain smoking, was made even harsher by fear.

  ‘You’re withholding material information, which makes you one of the bad guys, Tommy.’

  ‘What you gonna do?’ he demanded. ‘Put me in prison?’ His voice was a bronchitic rasp. ‘You can’t frighten me, Mr Rickman. I’m dealing with a psychopath who threw a kid off the roof of a car park like he was chucking away an empty sweet wrapper.’ Rickman heard the quiver in Eames’s voice and tried persuasion one last time.

  ‘Michael Aldiss didn’t deserve to die. I know you’d have stopped that if you could.’

  ‘Yeah, well I couldn’t. And that was when I was still on the payroll.’

  ‘Tommy,’ he said. ‘We can work this out — talk to me.’

  ‘Maitland would carve my tongue out and make me eat it.’

  ‘Okay then, listen—’

  ‘You had your chance, Rickman,’ Eames interrupted. ‘You blew it. I’m dumping this phone, so don’t waste your time tracing it.’

  Rickman heard a sudden blast of noise: the crack of a seventy-mile-per-hour wind against the mobile phone’s mike, the roar of traffic, then nothing.

  Chapter 47

  Nobody was late. They mustered at three p.m. in the supermarket car park, Cass’s most trusted colleagues, fizzing with adrenaline and primed for action. This was the edge of Merseyside, the outskirts of the suburbs, bordering flat fields, empty at this time of year. Beyond that, nothing but meres, marshes and dunes all the way to the coast. Wright and Gormley were smoking cigarettes, as they always did whenever they escaped the smoke-free environment of the station. Williams leaned against the boot of his car, the constant drumbeat of his hands the only indication of nerves. Cass had half-expected Smith would be a no-show. But there he was, standing a little apart from the others, his arms crossed, his long, serious face pale and worried-looking. Smithie was a follower — although he whinged a bit at the sidelines, when it came down to it, he usually did as he was told.

  Cass hitched his trousers and sauntered over to the group, gathering them round, secretly revelling in the curious glances of the shoppers, the mums anxiously pulling their children out of reach as they passed the group of tough-looking men.

  ‘Here’s how it’ll go down,’ Cass began.

  ‘Sarge?’

  ‘What, Smithie? You forget to turn off the gas at home or something?’ The others laughed. ‘He looks like a bus driver with piles, doesn’t he?’ More laughter, but Smith’s anxiety apparently overrode his embarrassment.

  ‘DI Dwight.’ Smith’s gaze swept the group, as though he might find their team leader skulking in the background. ‘You said you’d fetch him.’

  Cass looked at Williams, who shifted his weight from one foot to the other and gave a little sigh.

  ‘The DI had already left when I got to the meeting,’ Cass lied. ‘He�
��s not answering his phone, so it must be switched off.’ He glanced around the group. ‘How will we cope?’ He camped it up a bit and Gormley chuckled. The looks of quiet disdain on the others’ faces reassured him he’d have no argument from them.

  Smith frowned, avoiding eye contact. ‘We could ring the venue — pass on a message. I think we should tell him, Sarge.’

  ‘So he can call the local focus group to evaluate the disruption to the Saturday badger watch?’ Gormley snorted, and encouraged, Cass continued. ‘Or maybe we need a risk assessment on the possible damage by police cars to night-flying insects.’ The rest of the posse were grinning. ‘We could be there and back with Carter in tow while Larry the Lamb’s still dithering. You know my motto, lads: JFDI.’

  ‘Just fucking do it!’ the other three chimed together, laughing.

  But Smith wasn’t quite ready to admit defeat. ‘There’s a contract out on Bernie Carter. What if he’s armed?’

  The rest of the men shuffled a bit and exchanged glances. They had all considered the possibility — Cass knew his lads — but hearing someone say it was like bringing a hex down on them.

  ‘He’s an accountant, Smithie.’

  ‘Rob Maitland is after his blood,’ Smith said. ‘If I was him, I’d hire some serious protection. And let’s face it, he’s been in the game long enough to know where to look.’

  Cass saw an opportunity to ditch the lads and warn Carter the cops were onto him before the cavalry rode in. ‘I’ll go on my own if you’re that bothered.’

  ‘No way.’ Gormley folded his arms, and Williams shook his head vehemently.

  ‘We’re a team, Sarge,’ Wright said.

  Cass shrugged. It was worth a try. ‘Okay. It’s not like we have to go in all Die Hard. We evaluate the situation, sit tight and call for armed backup, if it’s needed. I mean . . .’ He forced a laugh. ‘We’re not stupid, right?’

  Smith flushed, guessing correctly that the ‘stupid’ crack was aimed at him. Point successfully made, Cass turned slightly away from Smithie, excluding him and addressing the rest.

  ‘Carter’s not stupid, neither,’ Cass said. ‘He’ll know we’re monitoring his home phone, and after his missus called the landline, he’ll assume we’re on our way. The worst you’ll need to brace yourselves for is the chance that he’s already packed up and left by the time we get there.’ He prayed to God that Carter had the sense to get out.