A Place To Bury Strangers (Atticus Priest Book 2)

by Mark Dawson

“Did you see Molly York?”

  “I tried.”

  “But?”

  “She ghosted me. I’ve been calling and calling. Straight to voicemail.”

  “You’ve really got no idea where she is?” she said. “Her dad’s worried about her.”

  He laughed bitterly. “I bet he is.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “How much do you know about him?”

  “Not much.”

  Jessica looked up. York was watching her closely; she smiled in as noncommittal a way as she could.

  “You want to know why Jessica ran away from home? She’s scared of him. She’s terrified.”

  She picked her words carefully, aware that she had two audiences. “Why?”

  There was a pause, as if the boy was deciding whether or not this was something that he ought to share. “Because she says she saw him kill some geezer at their farm.”

  Jessica spoke too quickly, her surprise much too obvious. “What?”

  “Says she saw him put some kind of gun they use to kill cows against the back of this guy’s head and shoot him.”

  “When?”

  “Didn’t say. But now Molly thinks he knows that she knows. That’s why she ran.”

  “Thank you, Shayden. I’ll want to talk to you about that a little more if that’s okay.”

  “I ain’t going anywhere.”

  Shayden ended the call. Jessica stood with the phone held to her ear as she tried to weigh the importance of what she had just been told.

  “What did he say?”

  She turned too quickly, lowering the phone and fumbling it as she tried to put it back into her pocket.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  He smiled and took a step forward. “It didn’t sound like nothing. What did he say about Molly?”

  “He hasn’t been able to get in touch with her,” she said.

  She felt a knot of bile in her stomach. York was still smiling at her, but there was something in his eyes that she hadn’t noticed before.

  She held up the wallet. “Thanks for this. I’d better be going.”

  She opened the car door and was about to get inside when she heard the sound of a telephone ringtone. It was muffled, and it took Jessica a moment to place it. It sounded like it was coming from inside the gilet he was wearing. There was something about the sound that she recognised. It took her a moment, but she picked out the tune: ‘Blinding Lights.’

  She had heard that ringtone before.

  York smiled at her. “What is it?”

  “Molly has that ringtone.”

  She should have run, right there and then. Perhaps, if she had done that, she would have been able to put some distance between herself and him and get away. But she didn’t, and, as the words tripped out of her mouth before she could think to stop them, so she saw the expression change on James York’s face. His chummy affability took on an edge that was part suspicion and part determination. He must have seen the confusion on her face, watched as it changed to shock. He maintained his smile, but his lips whitened as they were pulled back against his teeth. There was animal cunning in his eyes.

  He took another step toward her.

  Jessica raised her hands to ward him off. “No farther, please, Mr. York.”

  He stood a little straighter, clenched his fists, and, instead of retreating, took a third step.

  “Stay where you are.”

  “We have the same ringtone,” he said. “Family joke. Look—I’ll show you.”

  He reached into his pocket.

  “Stay there. Not another step.”

  Jessica felt exposed and vulnerable. She had told Atticus she was coming here on her way home, but what if he didn’t check his voicemail?

  “Please, Officer,” York said. “This is just silly.”

  His emollient words might have been plausible save for the fact that Jessica knew what she had heard. There was that, and the fact that as she took a step to her left to get around him, so York stepped to his right to block her against the car. She retreated into the cabin, but, before she could get all the way in, he lunged forward and grabbed her right shoulder and tried to pull her out. She held onto the side of the seat as York yanked at the top of her arm. She fumbled open the compartment in the centre console and reached inside, her fingers closing around the plastic canister she kept there. York dragged harder, and, unanchored, she was hauled out of the car and onto the gravel.

  York knelt beside her, one hand pressed down on her sternum, the other clenched into a tight fist, cocked and ready to strike. Jessica fumbled the canister around, stretched out her thumb until it was over the stippled applicator, aimed up at York’s face and pressed. The can hissed as the propellant and liquid were ejected through the valve and into York’s eyes, nose and mouth. The liquid was a solution of CS and a solvent, and Jessica was so close that it was impossible to miss. The liquid splashed into York’s eyes, forcing them shut almost at once. Jessica reached up and shoved him, rolling out from underneath his body as he crashed down onto the gravel, his hands pawing at eyes that were streaming with tears.

  She backed away and took out her phone. It felt slippery in her hand, like a bar of soap, and she had only just managed to wake the screen when she saw York on his feet again. He had something in his hand and, as she backed away, she stumbled enough for him to close right up to her. He reached for her neck; she heard the unmistakeable crackle of electricity and felt a sharp pain, the sensation running into her right shoulder and then all the way down her arm. Her knees buckled and she collapsed, her left shoulder taking the impact and her head slapping into the muddy ground.

  York loomed over her, his eyes still streaming. She tried to scramble clear, but her legs were weak, and she could do nothing to stop York from jabbing down with the thing in his hand. She felt a sharp pressure against her neck, the electricity crackled again, and Jessica went rigid as her muscles locked.

  68

  Patterson and Lewis went inside the house. Atticus called a taxi and waited impatiently for it to arrive. He took out his phone and called Mack.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Did he say anything in the car?”

  “Not a word, and he wants to speak to a solicitor before I interview him. We’re waiting for them to get here. What about you?”

  “Just waiting for a taxi.”

  “You didn’t go inside?”

  “I thought I’d leave it to the police,” he said.

  She paused, then spoke again. “What are you doing tonight?”

  “I want to work on the case.”

  “What about?”

  “Some things that Miller said. I just want to cross-reference them with the notes I have on Burns from before.”

  It was a lie, but adjacent enough to the truth that he was able to say it without Mack picking up the falsehood.

  “That won’t take all night, will it?”

  “I hope not.”

  “I’m going to need a drink after I’m done with Miller,” she said. “Fancy it?”

  He was impatient to get back so that he could start to work. “Can I call you later?” he said, then, sensing her disappointment in his equivocal reply, realised that might have sounded like a snub. “That came out wrong. I’d love to. When would be good?”

  “Can you be flexible? Maybe eight thirty?”

  “That works.”

  The taxi arrived.

  “Come to the hotel,” she said.

  “I’ll see you there.”

  He ended the call.

  “Where to, mate?” the driver asked through the open window.

  Atticus opened the door and got in. “New Street in Salisbury. As fast as you like.”

  Atticus paid the driver, unlocked the door and hurried up the stairs. He took out his phone and transferred the photographs that he had taken at Miller’s house to his computer. He opened them in Photoshop—three photos, each taken from a slightly d
ifferent angle—and arranged them on his second screen. He selected the one with the least glare on the glass and blew it up to full size.

  He sat down and examined it. It was an official photograph from what appeared to be some sort of military event. There were nineteen men in uniform, arranged in three rows: a row of seven, sitting down at the front, and then two rows of six standing behind them. They were dressed in peaked caps and dress tunics with red banding around the collar and epaulettes on the shoulders. All of the men wore medals with green and purple striped ribbons over the left breast pockets of their jackets; Atticus zoomed in and, with a bit of Googling, identified the decorations as General Service Medals that were awarded after thirty days’ continuous service in theatre. There was a building in the background, but, despite zooming in as far as he could, Atticus could not identify it nor find any clue that might give him an idea what, or where, it might be.

  He zoomed out again and concentrated on the men in the photograph.

  Three of them were of particular interest to him.

  Atticus zoomed in on the man in the middle of the front row. He had medals on his lapel and a braided lanyard that ran down from the epaulette on his right shoulder. Atticus opened the photograph that Burns had used to blackmail the colonel and compared that man with the man in the front row.

  He was sure: it was a much younger Richard Miller.

  He zoomed out.

  The man on the far-right side of the second line had no medals or lanyards. He was big and broad of shoulder, standing straight with his chin jutting out. Atticus drew a box around his face, zoomed in again and clarified the image. He referred to the photograph from the house in Bogside and compared the two.

  Again, he was sure: it was Burns.

  He drew the focus back again and then closed in on the man in the middle of the back row. He was the shortest of the six who stood there, but, thanks to the way that the rows had been arranged, his face was easily visible between the two men who stood in front of him. Atticus stared at the man for a long minute; his eye had been drawn to him as soon as he had seen the photograph in Miller’s house. He went onto Facebook and found the profile of the man he wanted. There were twenty points in a person’s face that were unique. The ears would have been best, but the man was facing forward. Atticus scaled the two pictures and then measured the spacing between the eyes, the distance between the bottom of the nose and the top lip, the rough size of the ears.

  The photos were not perfect, and the comparisons were inexact, but they were good enough for Atticus to know that his gut feeling had been correct.

  It was James York.

  He closed his eyes and allowed his thoughts to unspool.

  There had been a third man in the bedroom in Londonderry.

  He had taken the photograph, and Miller had confirmed that he had been there, although he had pretended not to know his name.

  Burns had been blackmailing Miller.

  Could he have been blackmailing York, too?

  Atticus inhaled and held his breath, trying to find the clarity of thought that he would need to start identifying those facts that, when knotted together, would allow him to see the truth.

  Molly York seemed determined to run away from home. Why? What had prompted it? What if it wasn’t because she had wanted to be with Shayden Mullins? What if Mullins was a means to help her to get away, rather than the reason? Was it possible that the reason she had run had nothing to do with what York had suggested?

  A man who might have been blackmailing York had been murdered.

  York’s daughter had run away.

  Coincidence?

  Lots of coincidences.

  Atticus could see some of the threads he needed, but not the others. He started to extrapolate, to speculate and test the strength of the connections that he had created, and then stopped as a thought crashed through to the front of his mind.

  Jessica Edwards had gone to see York this afternoon.

  Atticus took out his phone and called Jessica’s number.

  Voicemail.

  He held the phone out and stared at it.

  He breathed in and out and hoped against hope that he hadn’t been stupid enough to have been used.

  He called York’s number.

  69

  James York drove the detective’s car up onto Fifty Acre, the field to the north of the house, and bumped it along the muddy track until he reached the barn.

  He opened the boot and dragged her out. He had wrapped her hands and ankles with tape and then stuffed a rag in her mouth to keep her quiet; the latter was unnecessary since she was still unconscious after he had knocked her out. He hauled her from the car into the barn, then opened the trapdoor and dropped her into the cellar, closing the door and padlocking it. He backed the car inside until it covered the trapdoor. He would have to get rid of it eventually, but that was something that would have to wait.

  He found her bag on the passenger seat. He opened it and emptied out the contents: a purse, a packet of tissues, some makeup, a box of breath mints. He opened the purse and thumbed through her bank cards and driving licence, flipping through them one by one. Nothing of interest.

  He tucked the purse under his arm and walked back to the house, stopping at the blackened oil barrel that he used when he wanted to burn waste. He took a jerrycan of petrol from his shed and some kindling from his wood-store; he dropped the kindling into the can, poured the petrol over it and lit it with a match. The fire caught at once, the flames reaching up over the sooty rim. He flipped the woman’s cards into the barrel, then her purse. The cards began to warp and then melt, plumes of acrid black smoke unwinding into the night.

  He went into the house and took off his boots. He was hungry; he would make himself something to eat before he went out to dig a pit in the field. He took the detective’s phone out of his pocket and laid it down on the kitchen counter. He was just setting the microwave to heat his dinner when the phone started to ring. He squinted at the screen. The display showed the name of the caller: Atticus Priest. He let the phone ring three more times until it went silent.

  Why was he calling her? They had been working together. Perhaps he was checking in on her. He powered down the phone to ensure that the GPS was off, and left it by his boots so as not to forget it. He would bury it with her.

  The microwave had just beeped that his food was ready when his own phone rang. He cursed, took it out and saw that now Priest was calling him. He bit his lip. He knew he would have to speak to him eventually, but the prospect of it was not something that he was looking forward to.

  He took a moment to compose himself and then accepted the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. York?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s Atticus Priest. How are you?”

  “About as good as could be expected under the circumstances.”

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  “Not at all. I’ve just got back from the field—had a cow get tangled up in barbed wire. Silly sod’s cut her legs. Got blood all over me. Do you have any news about Molly?”

  “No, I’m sorry, I don’t. I was just calling to see if you’d heard anything.”

  “Not a word. But the detective from London stopped by.”

  “Jessica?”

  “That’s right. She said that the lad from before was in London. She said he’d been in Salisbury again.”

  “Molly’s not with him?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “When was this?”

  He closed his eyes and concentrated on what he needed to say. “She’s been twice, actually. Once this afternoon and once this evening.”

  “Why did she come back?”

  “She left her identification here. She came to get it. She was only here five minutes.”

  “I’ll call you if I find anything else out.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  York said goodbye and the line went dead.

 
He paced. Had Priest believed his story? There was no reason why not. It would check out if he—or the police—were minded to investigate it.

  The conversation certainly clarified one thing: he had to get rid of her sooner rather than later. He had decided to put it off until tomorrow, but that seemed like an unnecessary risk now. There was no reason to wait. It was the same for Molly, too. He had been delaying that, knowing that it would be more difficult when it was his own flesh and blood, but he was just going to have to pull himself together and get it over and done with. He didn’t have a choice. Molly had been in the cellar since they had returned from London. He could have kept an eye on her, kept her under lock and key, but that couldn’t last forever. York knew that she would run again as soon as she saw the chance, and how could he risk that? She had told the boy in London about what she had seen, and he had told the detective. York was going to have to think about whether he would need to do something about him, too.

  First things first, though.

  He collected his meal from the microwave, peeled the cellophane sleeve away and picked at the pasta with a fork. He looked at his watch. It was getting late. He would eat and then go back up to Fifty Acre and dig a grave big enough for the two of them, plus the lad who had come around last night. That had been a nice touch. York had taken Molly’s phone and sent a message to Jordan Lamb about how much she wanted to see him, and, true to form, the lovesick idiot had turned up in his car an hour later. York had used the stun gun to disable him and then, while he was still spasming from the shock, had finished him off with the bolt gun. Him disappearing at the same time as Molly gave him the chance to muddy the waters; the two of them had run off together.

  It was time to tidy everything away. He’d find a spot in the copse by the fence; no one went up there. He had the bolt pistol in his Land Rover. He would use that on Molly and the officer, then drive them up to the field and bury them. It would take two or three hours, he estimated, but once it was done, it was done.

  70

  Atticus put the phone down on the desk and stared at it. York was lying to him. He had stammered and left a long pause before telling him that Jessica had been to the farm on two occasions. Lying was a complicated business, and York had found himself caught in the crux of what he had said and what he thought Atticus might know. A pause was often an indication that a conversational partner dealing in untruths was trying to think of something safe to say.