Her Last Breath: The new crime thriller from the international bestseller (Sullivan and Mullins)

by Alison Belsham

  Eventually, however, all the questions were spent. The prosecution barrister thanked her for her time and the judge told her she could stand down. Then, as she walked on shaky legs across the floor of the court towards the exit, Sam Kirby started to sing.

  Frankie and Marni,

  Sitting in a tree,

  K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

  The public gallery erupted with gasps and a few supressed laughs, while the jury did their best to look as if they hadn’t noticed what was going on. Kirby sang it again, louder, if it could be called singing in her tuneless, rasping voice.

  Marni swung round to face the woman in the dock. Sam Kirby’s face was like a distorted mask with a joker grin – and Marni felt she’d never hated anyone more in her life. All the anxiety of her time on the stand was gone, replaced by cold, hard anger. Francis stood up to intervene, watching as Marni locked eyes with the killer.

  ‘Frankie and Marni . . .’

  ‘Order, order,’ shouted the clerk of the court, but apart from Kirby the court was silent. All eyes were on the two women.

  Finally, Marni wrestled her feelings under control and turned her back on Kirby.

  As Marni left the court, Francis hurried out alongside her, texting as they walked back to the witness room to pick up her things.

  It took Marni some time to calm down. She paced up and down in the small room, clenching and unclenching her fists at her side.

  ‘What a bitch!’ she said. ‘So pathetic.’

  ‘A clever bitch,’ said Francis. ‘The defence will now use her insinuation to attack our credibility still further. If the jury can be led to believe we had a relationship, all your evidence will probably be discounted in their eyes.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake – please don’t tell me I endured all that for nothing. I need a cigarette.’

  ‘Listen, it’ll probably be fine. It’s our best hope of having Kirby convicted – and I can’t tell you how grateful I am, Marni.’

  Their eyes met. He still looked so young – and handsome. Sometimes she thought it was a pity that things hadn’t worked out between them.

  ‘Come on,’ said Francis. ‘I’ll walk you to your car.’

  Marni sighed, and rummaged through her bag to find her cigarettes.

  As they came down the stairs from the witness room into the main foyer, Tom Fitz set foot on the bottom step.

  ‘Inspector, I’ve been looking for you.’

  ‘Don’t harass my witness, Fitz,’ said Francis. He sounded wary.

  Marni was relieved that Francis was with her. She didn’t want to have to answer the reporter’s questions about the exact nature of their relationship. Her cheeks flushed – no doubt Tom Fitz would interpret that as something meaningful.

  ‘If you need to talk about the case, maybe you could call me later, Tom,’ said Francis. ‘It’s been a long day.’ He paused and then added, ‘And I need to talk to you. Who told you all that stuff you published yesterday?’

  ‘Can’t name my sources, Inspector. But maybe you’d like to comment on what I’ve just heard.’

  ‘What might that be?’ said Francis.

  ‘Word is that you’ve just put out the call to bring Alex Mullins in for questioning.’ Tom Fitz looked pointedly at Marni as he said it.

  It took Marni about three seconds to work out what Francis had done – the text he’d been sending as they’d left the court.

  ‘You fucking bastard, Frank Sullivan!’

  30

  Tuesday, 22 August 2017

  Rory

  Within fifteen minutes of Francis’s text, Rory had the tactical firearms team ready for action outside the Mullins house on Great College Street. The boss had just been on the line again, asking if he had Mullins in custody yet – because if he didn’t, his mother was likely to have warned him what was coming.

  ‘I’ll call you back, boss.’

  Four armed officers surrounded the front door, while another two had gone around to the back of the house to intercept the boy if he made a run for it that way.

  Rory gave the team leader the signal to start. The officer rang the doorbell. They waited fifteen seconds and then rang again.

  ‘Open up, police.’ The officer banged on the door.

  The door remained firmly closed. One of the team stepped into position with a hand-held red battering ram – the Enforcer, as it was affectionately known. The team leader gave him a nod. He drew back the heavy metal tube and swung it with considerable force against the door. With a cracking sound, the door flew open and the team poured in.

  Rory waited nervously, leaning against the side of his car, smoking. He wiped sweat from his brow with the palm of his hand, then wiped it on the seat of his trousers. Still anxious, he listened on his radio to the shouts and the banging of the internal doors being kicked open.

  ‘Clear.’

  ‘Clear.’

  ‘Clear . . .’

  ‘Got him, he’s in his room.’

  Thank God! Now he just needed to make sure Bradshaw knew it was him, rather than Sullivan, who’d brought the boy in.

  There were sounds of a scuffle over the radio. Shouting and swearing.

  Rory waited, confident that four armed men would be able to bring Alex Mullins out.

  Finally, the armed officers emerged, leading Alex Mullins, handcuffed, into the street. One of them had a bloody nose.

  Rory went over to them and looked the boy up and down.

  ‘Did he do that?’ he asked, gesturing to the man with the nosebleed.

  The man nodded.

  ‘Right, I’m arresting you for assaulting an officer.’

  Alex sneered as Rory cautioned him.

  ‘You got nothing on me,’ he said. ‘I was provoked.’

  Rory turned to the team leader. ‘Get him down to John Street now.’

  He lit another cigarette and went back to his car. It was fine to feel a little smug – everything was going according to plan.

  Alex Mullins didn’t look as scared as he should have when Rory came into the interview room. In fact, the kid looked bored. Rory checked his watch. Now he had him under charge, they would have time to build some kind of case against him – then, if they managed that, they could hopefully get an extension to hold him longer. They would need it. Problem was, at the moment they didn’t have anything linking him to either scene. They had to extract an admission from Mullins that would make a murder charge stick.

  Rory sat down opposite him and rested his forearms on the Formica tabletop.

  ‘I’m going to assume that your resisting arrest was an admission of guilt.’

  Alex’s eyebrows went up. So he had the same attitude problem as his mother.

  ‘Then you’d be wrong,’ said Mullins. He tilted his chair back, staring insolently across the table.

  ‘In which case, why did you hit my officer?’

  ‘Your lot broke into my house – you had no right to do that.’

  ‘We had a warrant. You didn’t answer the door.’

  ‘A warrant for what?’ Alex’s look was a direct challenge. ‘You think I killed my girlfriend?’

  Rory studied the boy’s sneering face for a moment. Was it the face of a double murderer? It could be. He’d encountered enough murderers in his time to know they looked just like anybody else.

  ‘Did you know Sally Ann Granger?’

  ‘I’m sure you know the answer to that already.’

  ‘You were at college with her, weren’t you?’

  ‘You see, you knew.’

  ‘Alex, you’re in deep trouble. Now, drop the bloody attitude and answer the questions.’

  ‘You don’t have anything on me. You’ll have to let me go.’

  ‘Did you attack Sally Ann Granger last Thursday evening?’

  ‘No.’

/>   ‘You know she’s dead, Alex?’

  He nodded but didn’t speak. Suddenly he was the frightened teenager he’d been the first time they’d questioned him, all bravado gone. He was only able to keep up the act for so long.

  ‘I’d like to know exactly what you were doing last Thursday evening.’

  ‘I want my lawyer.’ Finally, he seemed to have realised the seriousness of his predicament.

  ‘I’ll ask someone to call her in a moment,’ said Rory. ‘But first, just tell me why you did it.’

  Alex’s head snapped up and his eyes met Rory’s. He glared – the fear had been replaced with anger.

  ‘You brought me in before because I was Tash’s boyfriend. Don’t you think you should be talking to Sally Ann’s boyfriend this time?’

  ‘She had a boyfriend, did she?’

  ‘You didn’t know?’ The insolent look was back.

  31

  Wednesday, 23 August 2017

  Francis

  Francis was uneasy. Holding Alex Mullins for assaulting a police officer because they had nothing concrete to tie him to the murders was a typical Mackay manoeuvre – and not one he approved of. He’d been too heavy-handed. There was no reason to have smashed the Mullins’s door down, but Alex Mullins had hit a police officer, so the arrest was completely justified. And if Alex Mullins had killed Tash Brady and Sally Ann Granger – about which Francis certainly had doubts – at least he wouldn’t be able to attack someone else. But he’d be out soon enough if the team couldn’t hold him for anything better than assault.

  In the meantime, they needed to get back to investigating the case.

  And he needed to get out of his bloody office. It was like a furnace and he couldn’t think for lethargy.

  ‘Rory?’

  His sergeant appeared in his doorway in his shirtsleeves. There were dark patches under his arms and he leaned on the doorframe as if he was exhausted.

  ‘Sally Ann Granger said she didn’t know her killer, didn’t she?’

  ‘True,’ said Rory. ‘But it was dark in there when he attacked her.’

  ‘But if our theory was that she let him in, that it was Alex, then she wouldn’t have said she didn’t know him, would she?’

  Rory shrugged, not wanting to follow where Francis was leading.

  Francis pushed his chair back and stood up.

  ‘I’m going down to the aquarium for another look. Coming?’

  Rory grunted, but went back to his desk to fetch his jacket.

  As Francis went through the incident room, he stopped by Tony’s desk.

  ‘Any news on this supposed boyfriend yet?’ he said. Tony had been given the task of going through Sally Ann’s phone.

  ‘Nothing in the call log,’ he answered. ‘I’ve just been in touch with the phone company to get details of deleted texts.’

  ‘Keep at it,’ said Francis. ‘We really need a break in this case.’

  Bill Faraday, the aquarium manager, was at lunch when they arrived. The sullen girl on the reception desk seemed unwilling to let them wait in his office, despite Francis showing his warrant card. But Francis didn’t want to upset the staff.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘We’ll take a walk around the aquarium. Ask him to come and find us when he gets in.’

  For a moment, he thought she was going to ask them to buy tickets, but she just gave them a surly nod and went back to looking at her phone. After spending a few minutes examining the locking mechanism of the main doors, they headed back through the reception area towards the Victorian arcade.

  ‘If Sally Ann let him in, he could have quite easily left through those doors and pulled them shut behind him,’ said Rory.

  ‘True . . .’ said Francis, a note of hesitation in his voice. ‘But that would be risky. Even in the small hours, there’s some traffic on the roundabout out there. Remember, he would have been splattered with her blood from head to toe.’

  ‘Perhaps he wore overalls,’ said Rory. ‘Or stripped off before attacking her.’

  They came into the arcade. All the blood had been cleaned up. The aquarium had reopened and seemed busier than ever, as tourists milled around, wanting to see where it happened and looking for evidence of blood spatters that hadn’t been properly cleaned away. Francis tried to picture how it had looked the morning Sally Ann had been found. Were there any indications in the blood traces that the attacker had gone somewhere to take off a bloodstained overall or wash himself before getting re-dressed? He’d need to confer with Rose and the SOCOs on this, and study the photos.

  Francis prowled through the other areas of the aquarium, Rory tagging in his wake. If Sally Ann hadn’t let the man in, then how the hell did he get in? Could he have come in earlier in the day and hidden somewhere till the centre had shut? It seemed unlikely and they’d gone over what CCTV footage there was and found nothing suspicious – no unaccompanied man with a heavy bag who didn’t appear to exit. He inspected the fire escapes, but he knew they’d been carefully checked over by the scene-of-crime officers. They were of the push-bar kind that, once opened, wouldn’t have closed behind him. Nonetheless, there were traces of fingerprint powder on the bars and the surfaces of the doors. The SOCOs had done an efficient job.

  He went through a door marked ‘Staff Only’ and they found themselves in the backroom area of the aquarium. Water purifying and heating plant purred ceaselessly and the air was hot and humid. Rory mopped his brow with a handkerchief.

  ‘I don’t think the SOCOs found anything down here,’ he said.

  Francis looked around and went into the next room, wall to wall with glass tanks, most of which were empty. The whole building would have been thoroughly searched, so he didn’t know what he was expecting to find.

  They went down a narrow corridor. There was a door at the end. Francis tried it and found that it was locked.

  Footsteps came up behind them.

  ‘Detective Inspector?’ It was the manager, Bill Faraday.

  ‘What’s in here?’

  ‘That’s the staircase down to our reservoir.’

  ‘What happens down there?’

  ‘We draw in seawater, use it to fill the tanks. And there’s a drain that leads directly down into the sewers, for waste water run off.’

  ‘Show me, would you?’

  Bill Faraday’s face took on a pained expression, but he got a set of keys out of his pocket.

  ‘O-kay,’ he said, drawing the word out. ‘Follow me.’

  They followed him down a short flight of stairs that led to an underground chamber. As he flicked on the light, Francis saw that they were standing on the edge of a vast tank of water.

  ‘We bring fresh seawater in using a pump system via a pipe that goes out along the seabed some distance. We don’t take water from right by the beach – too much litter and suntan lotion. This reservoir runs the whole length of the building.’

  Francis was only listening with half an ear. He was looking around all the time for ways in which the killer could have got in if Sally Ann hadn’t let him in. He saw something glinting along the crease where the wall joined the floor.

  ‘Wait,’ he said.

  He bent to take a closer look. The corner was dark, what light there was blocked by his own shadow, but he could see a piece of metal. He pulled a latex glove from his pocket and put it on his right hand. Then he reached forward and picked the object up, turning round so he could hold it directly under the ceiling light.

  ‘What have you got?’ said Rory.

  Francis stared at it. It was cylindrical, a bit smaller than a pencil. Congealed blood clung to the grooves that spiralled round it – and, horrified, sickened, Francis knew precisely what it was.

  ‘It’s a drill bit for an electric drill. I think we’ve just found out how he made the holes through Sally Ann’s hands and feet.’
/>   ‘Jesus,’ said Rory.

  Bill Faraday’s mouth came open but he was stuck for words. For a moment it looked like he was going to vomit.

  Francis found a plastic evidence bag in his jacket pocket and dropped the drill bit inside.

  ‘He was down here,’ said Francis. ‘Is there a possible way in or out from here?’

  Faraday snapped out his trance and shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘What happens to the waste water?’ said Rory.

  ‘Here,’ said Bill, indicating the far end of the tank. ‘There’s an overflow outlet there that connects to the sewage system.’

  Francis headed towards where he was pointing.

  ‘Is this locked?’ said Francis, pointing at the grid over the main sluice outlet.

  ‘Should be,’ said Bill.

  Francis bent down and grasped the steel ring that acted as a handle. He wrenched it up and the grid opened. With another tug, he was able to raise the grid up on its hinges to past the vertical point, where it rested.

  Francis stared down the hole. Rory came to the other side of it and looked down. There was a metal stepladder attached to one side of the chute, leading down into the sewers. They could hear the sound of roaring water below.

  ‘Jesus, of course,’ said Francis. ‘He used the sewers to gain access and to move around unseen.’ He set a foot on the top rung of the ladder.

  ‘You can’t go down there,’ said Bill.

  Francis gave him a look. ‘Just try and stop me, mate.’

  Bill sighed. ‘Then at least let me fetch you a torch and a helmet.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Francis, removing his foot from the ladder. ‘Rory, get the SOCOs back to see if there’s any sign that this could have been used by the killer as a way in or out. Let’s get this drill bit up to Rose. I’d bet my life on it that it’s Sally Ann’s blood in those grooves.’