Deadly Secrets: An absolutely gripping crime thriller

by Robert Bryndza

  A small girl in a thick silver puffy jacket hung around outside one of the small lap dancing clubs, where music blared out. T felt the booming bass fizzing on his teeth and rumbling through his chest. He slowed as the girl made eye contact, and she opened her coat. Underneath she wore a skin-tight mini skirt and a cut-off black top which showed her emaciated ribcage. Her eyes were a piercing green, but dead, and her plump lips were dotted with cold sores.

  ‘You want some fun?’ she said, raising her voice enough to be heard at close range.

  ‘I want someone to model for me,’ said T, leaning down to her, his lips almost touching her ear. She moved back, looking from side to side, green eyes scanning the narrow street for police. A short, dark-skinned man with heavy stubble glanced over from his spot by the sex shop at the end.

  ‘Yeah? How much?’ she said.

  ‘Private work. Very private.’

  ‘A hundred quid for an hour. You have a hotel?’ said the girl, her eyes remaining dead throughout. Like an animated corpse. The loud music cut out, and then another track started, trance music, starting off with a low beat. The short man at the end was tilting his head towards the girl. T felt nerves growl in his stomach: this was both thrilling and worrying. This girl would give him consent, but he wanted to go far, and he didn’t want too many people to see her with him. The short guy at the end was her pimp, he was sure.

  ‘I’m going shopping,’ said T, tipping his head towards a sex shop further down. ‘I need a girl who’s not afraid to bleed, but I would make it worth your while. You also need to travel. My place is a little far out.’

  ‘It’s a hundred and fifty an hour if I have to travel, minimum three hours up front…’ The girl was so nonchalant. There was no fear or trepidation. She had the look of someone who was deep in drugs, perhaps in hock to a dealer or the short pimp.

  She suddenly bolted away and down towards Rupert Street. T looked for the pimp, but he was gone. A couple of community support officers had entered Walker’s Court at the other end. They were deep in conversation, as community support officers always seemed to be, but their eyes scanned the street, which was clearing out. Shadows vanished into doorways.

  T felt relief and picked up the pace, moving like a commuter, fast and in a rush. He breezed past the two community support officers and out into the fresh air at the other end, into a fruit market and away from temptation and excitement.

  Forty-Nine

  Erika and Isaac couldn’t get in and see Edward until early afternoon. Isaac said he would wait for her to go and see him first, and he hung back and grabbed a cup of coffee in the cafeteria downstairs.

  The ward was on the fifth floor. Erika was buzzed in through a set of double doors and directed to a row of beds at the end. As she approached the row of beds, she couldn’t work out which old man was Edward. So many of them were asleep, lying on their sides, with identical grey hair.

  She found him at the end of the ward, by a window overlooking the car park. He was tucked up under blankets. His face lit up when he saw her.

  ‘Erika, love,’ he said, lifting a bruised hand with a drip coming from it. The cabinet beside him was empty. She saw lots of the other old men had cards and fruit, and she wished she’d brought him something.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, reaching out and taking his hand. It was very dry. She pulled up a chair and sat close to the bed. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I had a fall. I got up in the night, and I don’t remember much else. The postman heard me shouting the next morning.’

  ‘You tried to call me, didn’t you?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had a mobile phone.’

  ‘I don’t usually use it, but me phone was cut off a couple of days after Christmas, and I couldn’t find out why. I always pay my bills…’ He sat up, agitated.

  ‘I know you do.’

  ‘And then the heating broke. I tried to get by with the fire. The ‘lectric went. I always pay the bills, Erika. You know that, don’t you?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m here now, and I’m going to make sure that everything is fixed,’ she said.

  ‘You’re a good lass.’

  She shook her head. ‘You’ve had a hip replacement?’

  ‘Yes. They put some pins in there too, the doctor said…’ He swallowed and started to cough. Erika took a cup from the cupboard by the bed and poured him some water from a jug. ‘Thanks, love.’ He drank the whole cup and passed it back to her. ‘I’ll be on the mend before you know it. Although, I’m not sure if I’ll have a bit of a problem in the shops.’

  ‘Why the shops?’

  ‘Won’t the pins beep when I go through the security barriers? It’s right embarrassing when it happens in Tesco.’

  ‘No, it’s not a metal detector in the shops, that’s only in airports.’

  ‘Oh,’ he chuckled. ‘I’m not planning on going anywhere, so that doesn’t matter. It’s so lovely to see you. Are you staying long?’

  ‘I’ll stay as long as you need me.’

  He waved it away. Isaac appeared at the top of the ward, and Erika nodded and beckoned him over.

  ‘This is my friend – colleague – Isaac Strong,’ said Erika. Edward looked up and took his hand, and they shook.

  ‘Very nice to meet you, Mr Foster. Erika’s told me a lot about you.’

  ‘Bet you think I’m a right fool though.’

  Isaac shook his head and smiled.

  ‘You’re a big lad… Tall.’

  ‘Er, yes. No good at sports though.’

  Edward squinted up at him. ‘Shame, I bet you would have made a cracking high jumper.’

  ‘Isaac is a doctor, a forensic pathologist.’

  ‘Is that dead people?’

  Isaac smiled. ‘Yes.’

  Edward chuckled. ‘I nearly needed your services. Thankfully the postman saw me.’

  ‘No!’ said Isaac, his eyebrows shooting up in alarm.

  ‘I’m just kidding, lad, nice to meet you. Any friend of Erika’s is a friend of mine.’

  A doctor appeared at the top of the ward and asked to speak to Erika. She left Isaac with Edward, and followed the doctor to the nurses’ station.

  ‘It was a fairly straightforward operation,’ he said. ‘We’ve already had him up and about. Recovery time is fast.’

  ‘Good.’

  The doctor’s face clouded over. ‘We are, however, concerned by the situation at home. Edward is underweight, and has a vitamin deficiency. He also came in with a nasty urinary tract infection. Normally we wouldn’t risk operating on a man in his condition, but the break was very bad. Luckily, the infection is starting to respond to antibiotics. We can’t discharge him until we know he has a care plan in place. Are you local?’

  Erika explained that she lived in London. She recounted the conversation she’d had with Edward on Christmas Day, and how he had been confused. The doctor nodded and listened.

  ‘Often, one of the symptoms of a urinary tract infection is confusion – or even hallucinations,’ he said, regarding Erika gravely. ‘This doesn’t solve our problem with him living on his own and being vulnerable, though. I’m going to recommend social services pay his house a visit, to see what his living situation is like.’

  He left Erika and went off on his rounds, and she stood for a moment in the corridor. Trying to work out how it had come to this. How fast the time had gone. It had come too soon for her to be facing middle age with an elderly father-in-law to look after.

  This was why she buried herself in work. Work made her feel alive, and young. Work was constant. There were always bad guys out there to catch. Evil had no age limit. She shook the thought away.

  ‘That’s fucked up,’ she said to herself. She smoothed down her hair and went back into the ward.

  Fifty

  Moss felt the Marissa Lewis murder case, complicated by the gas mask attacks, was spinning out of her control – and as the acting SIO, she was still playing cat
ch up. She was used to being a cog; in fact, she prided herself on being a cog in the overall machine: keeping things oiled, providing support and cracking jokes when things seemed to get tense.

  Now she was the boss, she felt the pressure of scrutiny, and despite only being the temporary SIO, she felt the shift in the team and the way they behaved towards her. She was called ‘ma’am’. The first time Sergeant Crane had called her ‘ma’am’, she’d thought of a joke –something along the lines of it rhyming with ‘Spam’. But she’d stopped herself, realising she needed to be serious.

  The other thing that was hampering her progress was the way Erika worked as an SIO. She didn’t write much down, preferring to work in her head, so Moss had spent most of the day playing catch up. The superintendent had asked her if anyone had re-interviewed Marissa’s mother, Mandy about her sleeping arrangements, and Moss had been clueless, racking her brains and trying to think back to the reports she’d read: did the superintendent mean Mandy’s sleeping arrangements as in the men she shared her bed with, or where she slept? Moss remembered at the last minute Mandy had been sleeping downstairs when Marissa was murdered, but drawing a blank had shaken her up. She couldn’t bear the thought of being demoted back to a Detective Inspector before the case was solved, but she had no clue as to how she was going to solve it, and even whether she could. Erika solved the cases, and she was always there ready to execute orders. Moss realised now how much she enjoyed following orders.

  After talking to the superintendent, Moss had gone to the rarely-used toilets on the top floor by the conference rooms, locked herself in a cubicle and phoned Celia, biting back tears as she poured out her woes.

  ‘This is the first time you’ve been given a case,’ said Celia. ‘You have to be kind on yourself… And you’re taking over in the middle of a complex case. You’re a popular member of the team. You should crack some jokes to lighten the mood; is there anyone new who doesn’t know your first name is Kate?’

  Moss laughed and blotted her cheeks with a scrunched-up ball of loo roll.

  ‘I’m now the boss; I can’t make Kate Moss jokes, people are looking up to me to provide them with guidance and wisdom and strategy. And I have to solve the bloody thing whilst jugging case files and…’ Her voice tailed off.

  ‘Lists,’ said Celia. ‘You’re bloody good at lists. You’ve always got a pile of Post-its by the fridge, and we work through them and we always solve problems, and we get things done. You should always break problems and tasks down, instead of trying to tackle them head on in one.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Moss said. ‘It’s not a murder case, it’s a series of to-do lists.’

  * * *

  It was now late afternoon, and Moss was back in the incident room, working at her cluttered desk in the corner. She had been offered the use of an office, but there hadn’t been any time to move her computer access and the vast amount of paperwork on her desk. On Celia’s advice, she now had a terrifyingly long to-do list, but she felt better about it. One good thing about being the boss was that you got to delegate.

  ‘Any news on Don Walpole’s location?’ she shouted.

  ‘We’re still waiting on the national ANPR data centre,’ said Crane. ANPR stood for the Automatic Number Plate Recognition database. ‘If he crossed the congestion charge zone, that will be the bullseye.’

  ‘Can you chivvy them along, and tell them we’re not asking for our health!’ she said, scanning her list. ‘We should also put out a check on his passports and his credit cards at this stage. He is the closest we have to a suspect.’

  Crane nodded and picked up his phone.

  ‘What about the diamond earrings? Where is McGorry?’ Just as Moss asked, McGorry came back into the incident room. ‘You went this morning to find the jeweller in Hatton Garden, yes?’

  ‘Yes, Moss, I mean, boss.’

  ‘Stick with Moss.’

  ‘Okay. The guy in the jeweller, Mr Litman, remembered Ella coming in with Marissa to have the earrings valued. He said they were genuine and worth ten and a half grand. I then went back to see Mrs Fryatt at her house, to ask her again about the earrings… I even had a description. They were princess-cut diamonds in twenty-four karat gold.’ He blew his cheeks out. ‘She’s a nasty old cow, she accused me of being in the wrong, saying that all her jewellery is accounted for and up in her safe.’

  ‘Did you ask to see the safe?’

  ‘I did, and she said it was in her bedroom, and that she didn’t invite young men into her bedroom without a warrant.’

  Peterson and Crane laughed, and Moss had to keep a straight face. It was on the tip of her tongue to crack a joke that no one ever needed a warrant to get in her knickers, that all it usually took was a slap-up meal at Nando’s, but she reminded herself she was now acting SIO.

  ‘Did you think Mrs Fryatt was lying?’

  ‘I’m confused, because I also asked her to confirm the name of the jeweller where her son works,’ said McGorry. ‘It’s the same jeweller, R.D. Litman & Sons. Charles Fryatt is married to Mr Litman’s daughter, Lara… She’s a retired schoolteacher and they have three children who are all grown up. It’s quite a big family business. Mr Litman’s other two sons also work there.’ He paused for everyone to take in the link. ‘Charles Fryatt wasn’t at work when I went in. We only saw Mr Litman. I asked Ella if there had been anyone else in the jeweller when she and Marissa went in to have the earrings valued, and she said they had only seen Mr Litman.’

  ‘There’s a chance that Charles Fryatt didn’t know?’ asked Crane.

  ‘That’s one hell of a fishy chance, but you say Mrs Fryatt offered up the information about where Charles worked?’ said Moss.

  ‘Yeah, with no qualms, she didn’t seem worried. She seemed proud that he had such a good job,’ said McGorry.

  ‘Have you spoken to Charles Fryatt?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t get hold of him. When I called the shop back, Mr Litman said that Charles wasn’t at work. He wasn’t answering his phone either, and his wife didn’t know where he was.’

  ‘What if Marissa was lying about where she got the earrings?’ said Peterson.

  ‘Why lie that you stole them from someone? Wouldn’t it be easier to say that she got them from an admirer who came to see her dance at the club?’ said Moss.

  ‘What if it was something more sinister?’ said McGorry. ‘I don’t know what, but Marissa Lewis was a woman with a million secrets.’

  ‘That’s all this case needs, is to get more sinister,’ said Moss, looking down her list, and once again, feeling overwhelmed.

  Fifty-One

  Erika and Isaac stayed at the hospital until late in the afternoon.

  ‘He seems very stoic,’ said Isaac, as they drove back to Slaithwaite.

  ‘It’s a northern thing. People are much nicer than in London, and they have a much more sensible way of looking at life.’

  ‘What did the doctor say?’

  ‘They won’t let Edward back home until they can see he’s able to look after himself, or it’s a nursing home.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘I need to clean his house, and try and get things working again. I can’t have him being discharged to the place in that state, and what would social services say about it?’

  They stopped at the supermarket on the way home, and stocked up on food and cleaning products. The sun was going down when they approached the village, and it looked cosy, with the golden light twinkling off the snow.

  ‘I’ll see if I can get the fire going,’ said Isaac when they came inside. ‘I think it’s warmer outdoors.’ He started working on the stove, emptying it out and cleaning the grate.

  ‘Mystery solved about the gas,’ said Erika, finding and opening a pile of mail. ‘Looks like Edward changed over his provider, and they don’t have the right bank details…’

  Isaac was holding a match to a pile of paper and logs, but nothing was happening.

  ‘And the same with his phone. It looks like one of tho
se comparison companies persuaded him to switch over all of his utilities, but they’ve got the wrong address, the wrong bank details… Bastards,’ she said, picking up her phone. Isaac watched in amusement as Erika tore into the utilities companies, registering a complaint and getting Edward reconnected.

  They spent the rest of the evening scrubbing and cleaning Edward’s house. An engineer came out very quickly, and the gas supply was back on around 8 p.m., so they were able to get the central heating working, and more importantly they were able to wash. Isaac took a shower, and then Erika ran a bath in the newly clean bathroom. As she eased into the hot water, she felt her aching body relax, and the cold which had dogged her for the last few days started to ease away. She’d lit candles, and they gave the bathroom a homely, cave-like feel. Edward’s bathroom had been the same for years, with its lavender-coloured tiles. There was a set of shelves above the toilet, with a stack of boxed Pears soap, a knitted Spanish señorita toilet roll holder, boxes of talcum powder, and hair dye in ‘conker’, the shade Mark’s mother used to use. Erika hadn’t dared throw anything away on the shelves when she’d cleaned. They seemed sacred; they were the remnants of Edward’s life with Mark’s mother, Kath. Erika thought back to Mark’s mother, and how kind and innocent she had been. She’d lived in her own little world, wrapped in the protection of Edward and Mark, in this cosy little Dales village.

  As she shifted in the hot water, there was something about that shelf – a memory that niggled at the back of her mind, but she couldn’t quite access it. The steam floated up to the ceiling and made the candle flames flicker and fizz. She tipped her head back against the cool tiles, and her eyes began to lull shut in the warm water.