Merciless: a gripping detective thriller (DI Kate Fletcher Book 2)

by Heleyne Hammersley

  ‘Find out the bank and branch,’ she said to Sam. ‘I think we might have found the link between Maddie Cox and Caroline Lambert.’

  She watched as Cooper typed the numbers into a search site which promised to find any bank by its sort code. There it was. An HSBC branch local to where Caroline Lambert lived.

  ‘What’s the betting that Caroline gave her the money?’ Kate asked. ‘But what did she want in exchange?’

  She thought about the PM findings. The blood tests and the fingerprint evidence didn’t quite tally with Caroline Lambert’s story and the long-term use of tranquillisers wasn’t consistent with Dennis Lambert’s condition. If Maddie had given Caroline drugs in exchange for the money, it would have been easy to have kept Dennis sedated and ultimately for Caroline to force him to drink a deadly cocktail of alcohol and morphine. But why? Was it really a mercy killing? Kailisa’s results suggested that Lambert’s cancer wasn’t advanced enough to cause him to be bedridden and the pain should have been manageable with over-the-counter pain relief or small doses of morphine. Caroline had already confessed to murder but she’d been charged with aiding and abetting suicide; was it all a cover? She could have murdered her father and made it look like she helped him to die in order to escape a custodial sentence. But why? He was going to die anyway. It made no sense.

  Kate’s phone rang. Barratt.

  ‘I’ve shown the photograph to Ethan,’ he began, dispensing with conversational pleasantries. ‘He doesn’t recognise her. But the guy from GA, Warren, is fairly sure that Caroline Lambert is the woman who attended a meeting in November or early last month and left with Maddie Cox.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Kate said. ‘Are you in Donny?’

  Barratt confirmed his location.

  ‘Right. I’m going to text you a photograph of Maddie Cox. Get down to Fabrio’s near the market and see if the two women were in there together on Tuesday evening.’

  He made a joke about bringing back pizza for tea and hung up.

  Kate scrolled through her contacts and called O’Connor. ‘Got a job for you, Steve,’ she said when he answered. ‘You know most of the loan sharks out there, see if you can find out who Maddie Cox might have been in debt to. Probably for over ten grand. Ask if she paid it back at the beginning of December. If she didn’t, then I want whoever gave her the money brought in here. I don’t think her death was about money but Raymond’ll kill me if I don’t cover all the bases.’

  O’Connor threw a few possible names at her, probably hoping to impress, and said he’d get onto them and then ended the call. Kate smiled to herself. She’d never known a police officer who was so proud of his dodgy connections. If O’Connor hadn’t followed a career in law enforcement, Kate was sure that he’d have been a small-time gangster and even more sure that his arrogance would have led to him getting caught.

  Jobs allocated, she turned back to Cooper.

  ‘I need you to brainstorm something with me,’ she said.

  Cooper looked apprehensive.

  ‘I have some ideas about the link between Caroline and Maddie but I need to bounce them off you to see if they make sense. What if they met while Dennis was in hospital, became friends and Caroline offered to help Maddie out with money? They both went to Gamblers Anonymous as well so there’s another possible point of contact. Then Caroline wants something in return. Drugs for her dad. She gets what she wants and uses them to kill him. Okay so far?’

  Cooper looked sceptical. ‘Why would she want to kill somebody who was dying anyway unless her story’s true and it was a mercy killing?’

  ‘I don’t know. But Kailisa seems to think there are a few things about her story that don’t add up. She might have been keeping him sedated for a while and she might have forced him to drink the whisky and morphine.’

  ‘Okay. But I still don’t get why. If she wanted his house to sell then all she had to do was wait. Same for any money he might have had. Why go to the bother when he’s only got months left? Why speed it up and confess to helping him die?’

  Kate kick-wheeled her chair back to her desk and logged into the computer. She did a quick search of recent cases of so-called ‘mercy killing’, unfamiliar with the vagaries of the law. The CPS had issued guidelines in 2009 which set out reasons why prosecution should and should not be considered despite the maximum sentence for assisting suicide still standing at fourteen years in jail. Since the new guidelines, Kate could find only one case of a successful prosecution for assisted suicide and a handful more which were still pending.

  It had taken her ten minutes searching the internet to gather the information, which was easily available to anybody with an interest. Had Caroline Lambert visited the same websites? The criteria for prosecution suggested that she might escape with a fine or even have her case dismissed. She was known to the deceased, she wasn’t a medical professional helping him, she didn’t appear to have been paid by him, and there was no history of Caroline abusing her father. If Kailisa’s findings could be disproved, then it was likely that she would walk away from this, and she probably knew it – which made sense of her dramatic confession. There wasn’t even a case for her gaining financially as Dennis was going to die anyway.

  ‘Bloody clever,’ Kate muttered, drumming her fingertips on her desk top. ‘But I still don’t understand why you couldn’t just wait.’ She spun round in her seat. ‘Sam. Why do people kill other people?’

  Cooper turned to face her. ‘Money, power, they’re fucked up in the head, revenge…’

  Money didn’t feel right. Caroline Lambert lived in the most affluent part of Sheffield and could afford to lend thousands to somebody that she barely knew. Revenge. Was that at the heart of this case? But revenge for what? Brenda Powley had portrayed Dennis Lambert as a saint. The perfect family man. Worked hard and tried to keep his wife and daughter happy even after the loss of the elder daughter. Why would Caroline hate him enough to want him to die in pain? Kate checked the notes from the interview with the Powley woman. What had she said about the other daughter? She’d gone missing.

  ‘Sam, did you find anything about Caroline’s sister? I sent you a text after we’d interviewed Brenda Powley, thought it might be relevant.’

  ‘Not much,’ Sam admitted. ‘A few newspaper articles. I could probably get hold of the case notes if you need them. They’ve not been digitised but there’ll be a copy somewhere in the archives.’

  ‘Just run through the bare bones for now,’ Kate said. Getting hold of case files was a tedious process involving filling in forms in triplicate and following complicated chains of ownership, and she didn’t want the hassle unless it was absolutely necessary.

  Sam switched from the document she was viewing to a Word file. ‘Jeanette Lambert. Aged fifteen. Reported missing by her father on the seventeenth of August 1986. She’d been out with friends and never came home. The friends said that she’d seemed “fine” and she’d left them at about eleven pm to go home. That’s it. No sightings, no follow-ups, she just vanished. The papers printed her picture but there was no television appeal. I suppose fifteen was close enough to being an adult so it was just assumed that she’d done a runner.’

  Kate did a quick calculation. Jeanette Lambert would be in her mid-forties now. She’d have been at Thorpe Comp at the same time as Kate, a couple of years below her but they might have passed in the corridors or shared some of the same teachers. The name meant nothing but, out of fifteen hundred kids, Kate couldn’t be expected to remember them all, even the ones from the same estate, not after thirty years.

  ‘What about the mother?’ she asked Cooper. ‘She committed suicide.’

  ‘1995,’ Sam said. ‘Took an overdose of sleeping tablets. I couldn’t find out much else but the newspaper reports don’t hint at anything suspicious. Do you think Dennis killed her? Could that be what this is about?’

  Kate thought about it as a possible scenario. Brenda Powley suggested that Irene Lambert had been depressed since Jeanette disappeared. That would
be hard to fake. The tablets would have been on a prescription. Surely a doctor would have flagged up anything suspicious. It was a possibility, but it didn’t feel right. And why did she wait nine years? What the hell had happened in that house?

  ‘Sorry, Sam,’ Kate said. ‘I think we’re going to need the case file for Jeanette Lambert’s disappearance and anything else you can find out about the mother’s death.’

  As Sam dialled the number for the records office, Kate’s phone beeped. A text from Barratt confirming that Caroline Lambert and Maddie Cox had shared a table at Fabrio’s and had left together on the night that Maddie had died.

  ‘Shit,’ Kate sighed. Caroline Lambert had become a suspect in a second murder.

  Just as Kate was about to ring Hollis and update him, her phone rang.

  ‘Dan. I was about to ring you. Lambert was with Maddie Cox on the night she died. You need to bring her in.’

  Silence on the other end.

  ‘Hollis? Dan?’

  ‘I can’t bring her in,’ Hollis said. ‘She’s not here. The house is locked and her car’s gone. The next-door neighbours haven’t seen her since this morning. I think she’s done a runner.’

  JANUARY

  Caroline,

  I’m really worried about you. This is taking too long. You were supposed to spend a couple of weeks with him and then get it over with. He’s got inside your head, hasn’t he? I knew he would. He’s the one in the wrong, Caroline. He always was. You’re doing the right thing. You had a plan and you need to stick to it. You need to focus. Don’t let him get to you like he did before. You really believed that you were as bad as him, didn’t you? He convinced you that you were evil but you’re not. You know that now. You’re not that scared little kid anymore and you’re stronger than him.

  If you can’t do it then leave. Don’t let any more of his poison into your mind. You managed to convince me that getting rid of him was the right thing to do but you’re not a murderer, I know that. Killing Dennis isn’t murder though, it’s justice. But it’s not worth your sanity; it’s not worth your integrity. Don’t let this taint you, change you, make you less than you are. Stay strong and remember that I’m still here for you whatever the outcome.

  Love

  J

  23

  The nights were finally drawing out. Not by much, but Caroline felt that she was putting the lights on slightly later every day. She thought about checking, just for something to relieve the monotony but it was too much effort, too much to remember.

  The days were crawling glacially towards the end of January and she still hadn’t found the courage or the determination to do what she’d set out to achieve. She was still feeding and washing Dennis when necessary, and he was still trying to engage her in conversation when he was lucid. She’d managed to keep Bren’s visits to a minimum and hadn’t seen her for a few days – not since she’d popped in to wish Dennis a belated happy New Year which seemed a little pointless as he had nothing to look forward to. Caroline had accused her of being cruel but Bren was defiant in her well-wishing and even gave him a kiss. If she noticed that he was a bit fragrant she’d obviously decided not to comment.

  It was Bren’s interference that Caroline was most worried about. It would be like her to call social services to cause trouble and let Caroline know that she was being watched. The GP had visited last week, after a call from Caroline. She knew from her research that she needed her father to have been seen by his doctor if this was going to work. They wouldn’t take her word for the speed of Dennis’s deterioration.

  Fortunately the doctor had given Dennis a perfunctory examination. The sedatives that Caroline had given him that morning made him compliant but he wasn’t really lucid. She’d explained that this was a regular occurrence and the doctor had listened sympathetically and told her to keep him rested and clean. He’d asked about pain management and Caroline explained that the paracetamol didn’t always work. He’d written a prescription for codeine and suggested that she administer it regularly and then he’d left.

  She had more than enough drugs to keep him calm and comfortable but she didn’t actually want him to be either. She really had to make a decision and do something.

  Looking out of the kitchen window, she could see shadows forming on the roof of the house opposite. The chimney cast a thin block of black across the red tiles like the gnomon from a sundial. She’d once been able to tell the time by this shadow but she didn’t enjoy looking outside. The garden taunted her.

  He’d told everybody that he was doing it for Irene; only Caroline and her father knew the truth. She could still make out the remains of the flowerbeds, grassed over but still identifiable as hummocks in the otherwise flat lawn like ancient archaeological earthworks – or abandoned graves.

  After Jeanette, the garden had been a riot of colour as though the brightness of the flowers could fill the gap left by her sister. The wildflower bed attracted bees and butterflies and the roses could have won awards if her mum had had any interest in showing them. But her mum had remained resolutely indoors despite her husband’s encouragement. She wouldn’t tend the garden and she couldn’t even look at the greenhouse.

  Dennis always talked about the structure as if it was his pride and joy; some great achievement that he had completed like a Herculean labour for the woman that he loved. It had taken him three weeks from digging the foundations to putting in the last pane of glass. He’d done it mostly by himself, including laying the flagstone base and cementing round the edges; apart from the night that he’d made Caroline help him. She’d made one other contribution though, and she had always been convinced that Dennis had never noticed it. In the wet concrete, next to one of the corner struts of the table, she’d inscribed initials. It was tiny, a miniature hieroglyph that contained as big a secret as those on Tutankhamen’s tomb.

  She’d protested and cried when he’d made her pour concrete and flatten it down but he’d silenced her with the same threat that had kept her quiet for more than thirty years. A threat he’d used just a couple of days earlier when they spoke about the events of that summer. A threat which had finally convinced her that he was beyond redemption and without remorse.

  Her phone rang, interrupting the flow of memory and she grasped at it in relief, like a drowning sailor clutching a lifeline. The name on the screen wasn’t a surprise. She’d been getting these calls for a few days and ignoring them.

  ‘Maddie, what a surprise,’ Caroline answered, eschewing the usual greeting.

  ‘We need to talk,’ the nurse said. ‘You’ve been putting me off for days and I have to see you. I’m scared shitless that there’s going to be an audit and somebody will find out what I’ve been doing. My career could be on the line.’

  She sounded frantic and out of control as if she was in fear of her life, but it was just her job. If she got fired there’d be other jobs.

  Caroline struggled to keep the contempt out of her voice as she responded. ‘Calm down. You’ve done nothing wrong. Prescribing drugs is your job.’

  ‘Calm down?’ Maddie yelled. ‘How can I calm down? I can’t believe I let you talk me into this. Look, I’ll give you the money back. You said the first time that it would be the last then you came back for more. How many more times are you going to ask me to risk my career for a few grand? I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid.’

  Caroline held the phone away from her ear, letting the other woman rant for a minute more. When she finally started to calm down, Caroline interrupted. ‘Maddie? Maddie? You need to get a grip. I told you last time that that would be it. There’ll be no more prescriptions, no more demands. It’s done, okay? It’s over.’

  Silence.

  ‘You mean… he’s dead?’

  ‘No. He’s alive. But probably not for much longer. Things got a lot worse over Christmas. He’s going downhill rapidly.’

  ‘I’m still worried.’

  Caroline had to use every scrap of her willpower not to throw the phone at the wal
l. She needed to be able to think without interruption. ‘What about?’

  ‘I already told you. We could be audited at any time and I might not be able to hide what I’ve done for you.’

  ‘In which case, blame me. Say I blackmailed you.’

  ‘I’ll still lose my job.’

  ‘But you won’t go to prison. Let me take the flak.’

  ‘I don’t know. That might not work. And, anyway, I don’t trust you. I think I might have to go to the police and tell them what happened. I can’t sleep and I’m not eating properly. I need this to be over and done with. We need to talk properly, not over the phone. Can you get away tonight? Is there somebody to look after your father?’

  ‘I’ll arrange something,’ Caroline said. ‘Don’t go to the police yet. Let’s talk and see if we can make sense of this. There’ll be a way out for you, I’m sure.’

  More silence.

  ‘You still there, Maddie?’

  A sob from the other end of the line.

  ‘Maddie. Look. I’ll meet you later. Just name the time and place. We’ll sort it out.’

  ‘Somewhere public,’ Maddie said. ‘Somewhere where you can’t intimidate me.’

  ‘Fine. You choose. Listen, I need to get back to my father now. Text me the details.’

  She hung up without allowing Maddie the chance to say anything else. The nurse didn’t know it but she’d just forced Caroline’s hand. With Dennis out of the way, the police would have a difficult time proving anything beyond a mercy killing and she was prepared to confess to that. She might even avoid jail if she played it right – the grieving child who just couldn’t bear to see her father suffer any longer, something like that. If not she would probably only be sentenced to a few months and then she’d be free to get on with her life.

  A text pinged onto her phone. Maddie again. Fabrio’s at eight. It was a cheap Italian restaurant but always popular; Maddie hadn’t been kidding when she said she wanted to meet somewhere public. Caroline checked her watch. It was 4.15. Plenty of time.