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

by Alison Belsham

  ‘Cause of death?’ Rory asked tentatively.

  ‘You’re kidding?’ The look Rose gave him told him he shouldn’t have bothered asking.

  Without warning, Francis plunged through the mud towards the river bank. Rory and Rose watched him, puzzled.

  ‘Get the hell away and stop taking pictures,’ shouted Francis.

  Rory looked to the bank in the direction the boss was running.

  Tom Fitz was standing between two trees, his camera raised in front of his face.

  Rory looked round and spotted a uniformed PC. ‘Go and escort that man far enough away that he can’t take any more pictures.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Fitz was already backing away, but not before he’d taken a number of candid shots of Francis struggling through the mud.

  The reporter held up a hand. ‘I’m going, I’m going. But just one question. How did the girls’ tattoos lead you to these bones?’

  What the hell?

  The boss’s reaction reflected Rory’s own disbelief – he clambered up the bank and gave chase, his face darkening with the exertion. Tom Fitz turned and ran through the trees, pursued by Francis and the uniformed PC. Francis’s fists were clenched and Rory knew exactly what would happen if he caught up with Fitz.

  Ten minutes later, he rejoined them at the excavation site. He was red-faced and dripping with sweat, but he didn’t look like he’d been in a fight.

  ‘He got away,’ he said, panting heavily. ‘But how the hell did he know we were here?’

  Neither Rose nor Rory answered him, but Francis was looking at Rory.

  ‘Mackay, who did you talk to after I called you here?’

  Rory wasn’t sure he wanted to answer, but he did.

  One word.

  ‘Bradshaw.’

  50

  Thursday, 31 August 2017

  Alex

  Nothing seemed right. Nights spent on different sofas, waiting for the crash of the door being broken down. Days spent in a twilight existence of rooms with drawn curtains. His mother kept texting and texting, even his father had left a voicemail. Another girl was dead. Supposedly someone who’d been at college with him, but he didn’t remember her.

  And now this. A text message from his father’s brother, suggesting they meet.

  He wasn’t even sure he wanted to meet this Paul. His uncle. Or maybe his father. Was this really the way to go about things? He wished he could ask his actual father, Thierry, about it, but he didn’t dare.

  Liv said to give the guy a chance.

  Alex didn’t know the Hove pub scene as well as he knew the bars in Brighton, and he’d never been to the Blind Busker before. He walked over from Liv’s flat, hyper-aware of people and traffic on the streets, constantly looking out for a police car coming around the next corner. For most of the way he’d had a creeping feeling that someone was following him, although whenever he looked around, there was no one there. Why had he even come here? He stepped into the pub with some trepidation. How were you supposed to feel when you were going to meet the man who claimed to be your father for the first time?

  The interior of the pub was dark – and seemed even darker after the piercing sunlight outside. The walls were mainly painted black, as was the bar and the ceiling, and the space was lit by a series of large chandeliers that had been set at the low end of the dimmer switch. Alex blinked and looked around. He didn’t see anyone who could be his father’s brother. The whole thing was doing his head in – his uncle claiming to be his father and suggesting that the man he believed to be his father was actually his uncle.

  He went up to the bar.

  ‘Peroni, please,’ he said to the barman.

  ‘ID?’

  Alex dug his student card out of his pocket with a sigh. He knew he looked older than his nineteen years, but it would be a while before he looked over twenty-five.

  ‘You’re Alex,’ said a voice in his ear. A French accent.

  He turned to see the man that had come up behind him. It was like looking at his father, but not. If anything, perhaps it was looking at his father a few years into the future. Age hadn’t been so kind to Paul Mullins – his face was more hollowed out than his brother’s, his eyes more lined. Thierry’s hair was showing a sprinkling of salt and pepper, but this was more pronounced in Paul’s shorter hair.

  ‘You’re Paul?’

  ‘I’m your father.’

  The man’s statement made Alex instantly uncomfortable.

  Paul must have guessed this, as he turned his attention to the barman, ordering a Peroni for himself. He thrust a hand into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out an assortment of coins. Then he looked at Alex apologetically.

  ‘Pardon, it’s all Euros.’

  Alex paid for the beers with shaking hands.

  Could this man really be his father?

  Paul picked up his bottle of Peroni and led the way to a small corner table towards the back of the bar. He started talking before Alex had even had a chance to sit down.

  ‘What your mother and my brother have done is wrong. You’re my son. Thierry took your mother and he took you. I want you both back.’

  Alex stared at the label on his beer bottle. He could see his father in the way Paul moved and hear him in the sound of his voice – though Paul’s French accent was much more pronounced. It distracted him from what Paul was saying.

  ‘I’m sorry. Confronting this untruth, this lie, it must be very hard for you. You are shocked by what I say?’

  Alex nodded. ‘How can you be sure you’re my father?’ The familial resemblance he shared with Thierry had always been clear visible evidence that Thierry was his father. But when he looked at Paul, the resemblance could just as easily be to him, as the brothers were identical twins.

  ‘I know because of the dates. I’m not an idiot. I know when you were born and when I was with your mother. We were together at the time you were conceived.’

  What if he was telling the truth? Alex’s world rocked on its axis. The foundation on which he’d built his life was slipping away like sand through his fingers.

  ‘Why would my mother lie to me about something so important?’

  Both beers stood untouched on the table.

  ‘To you? To everyone. She lied to everyone about the father of her child, because she wanted it to be Thierry. She made to change history.’

  ‘But even if that’s true, you can’t expect to turn back the clock,’ blurted Alex.

  At last Paul picked up his beer and took a long drink from it. He put it down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘We could have a fresh start, Alex. You and me. Come back to France with me.’

  Alex didn’t know what to say. He’d only known of Paul’s existence for a short while, yet here was this stranger, a weirdly familiar stranger, suggesting that he leave his mother and move to France. He grabbed for his beer and knocked the bottle over. The pale liquid ran like piss down his leg. Paul laughed and held out his own bottle for Alex to take.

  Alex didn’t like the way he laughed, but he took the beer and downed what was left of it.

  ‘You need some time to think,’ said Paul. ‘You need to ask your mother why she lied to you. And why my brother claimed you as his own, when you’re not his child. But don’t wait too long, Alex. I can’t stay here for ever.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Alex. ‘I’m at college here.’ It sounded like a feeble excuse. And maybe it would be a good time for a spell out of the country.

  ‘Pah! We have schools in France. Better schools. You must come to Marseille with me. I’ll show you where I grew up. You’re half French – it’s as much your country as this one is.’

  Paul’s face had lit up when he mentioned Marseille. Alex had always begged Thierry to take him there, but for reasons best known to his
parents, they’d always refused to go back to France. Was Paul the reason?

  ‘But my mother . . .’

  ‘She could come too. Pah, I know she won’t.’ Paul’s eye’s narrowed. It was an expression Alex had never seen on his father’s face. ‘Come on, Alex, you’re a grown man. Don’t be tied to her at your age.’

  Suddenly Alex was swept by a feeling of revulsion for the man. Something wasn’t right about the way he was going about this. Something wasn’t right about him as a person. Alex studied the small black cross tattooed between Paul’s left thumb and forefinger. His nails were grimy, his clothes unkempt and unwashed.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ said Alex, standing up abruptly.

  Anger flashed in Paul’s eyes. ‘Merde!’

  ‘I don’t know you.’

  ‘You were stolen from me. Believe me, Alex, you’re mine. That’s a truth you’ll never escape from.’

  His words echoed in Alex’s ears as he walked away, and all the way back to Liv’s flat.

  51

  Friday, 1 September 2017

  Francis

  September. Autumn couldn’t come soon enough. Though the days were already getting shorter, the heatwave seemed to have intensified. Eight in the morning and Francis had needed the air conditioning on in his car. He parked in the morgue’s small car park, next to Rose’s dusty four-by-four. An unexpected blast of heat enveloped him as he opened the car door and he was sweating by the time he reached the entrance.

  He went into the lobby. Deliciously cool – it almost made up for the smell. Almost, he thought, as he opened the double doors to go through to where he could see Rose already at work. The camouflage effect of wearing a white lab coat against the white tiled walls and floor made her flame-red hair stand out all the more, and her long ponytail bobbed slightly in time with the music blasting from her wall-mounted speakers.

  She looked up and saw Francis approaching, so she reached for the control to turn the volume down.

  ‘Jefferson Airplane,’ said Francis by way of greeting. ‘Bit before your time?’

  She ignored the comment and pulled a white rubber sheet over the cadaver she was working on.

  ‘Here,’ she said, leading him across to one of the other mortuary tables.

  She pulled back the covering sheet to reveal a collection of stained and broken bones, arranged in the approximate layout of a skeleton.

  ‘The skeleton from Itchenor?’ said Francis.

  Itchenor Reach was the particular stretch of Bosham Water where the bones had been found.

  Rose nodded.

  Francis studied the bones. There were a few missing.

  ‘Tell me what you know so far,’ he said. It had to lead to something.

  ‘He’s been on the riverbed for maybe a decade or two, though I’ll probably be able to narrow it down a bit further when the test results come back. No sign of clothing or ID in the mud around him – just a few fibres clinging to the bones here and there.’

  ‘They’re probably not going to help us, are they?’ said Francis.

  Rose shook her head.

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Blunt trauma to the skull,’ said Rose. She pointed and Francis could see a gaping hole in the cranium. Fragments of bone lay alongside it – the caved-in portion that would have fallen away as the soft tissues rotted.

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘Could have been accidental.’ Rose sounded tentative at best.

  ‘How?’

  ‘If he was sailing on his own . . . maybe something hit him on the head, knocked him overboard.’

  ‘A falling branch?’ Francis shook his head. ‘Then his boat would have been found and the river searched for his body.’

  ‘I agree,’ she said. ‘Murder looks more likely – someone coshed him, then threw his body into the river.’

  ‘Was he weighted down?’

  Rose gave him the look that she generally reserved for pointless questions. ‘If there were rocks in his pockets, there’s no way of telling now.’

  ‘And no sign of a weapon?’

  ‘Nothing obvious.’

  ‘Any indication of what the killer used?’

  Rose picked up a fragment of the skull and turned it one way, then the other, in the bright light.

  ‘It could have been done with any number of things and the forensic evidence, in terms of blood and hair, would be long gone.’

  Francis looked down at the bones.

  ‘This is getting us nowhere.’

  ‘Don’t be impatient,’ said Rose.

  ‘Of course I’m impatient. I don’t want to watch another girl die.’

  ‘I’ve only just started. I should get some information from his dental records. Both jaws were intact, so I’ve been able to send x-rays and images to the forensic odontologist. If he’s ever been reported missing, they’ll be able to get a match without too much difficulty.’

  ‘What about his age?’ Francis was rocking backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet. He wanted so much more than he was getting, but there was no point in taking out his frustration on Rose.

  ‘Looking at the bones and teeth, he was a fully adult male, over thirty years old, but not showing signs of bone loss, so not elderly. Assessing the level of fusion of the intact sutures of the skull, I’d say we’re looking at someone maybe in their forties.’

  A man in his forties who went missing ten or twenty years ago. Probably murdered. No ID, no idea where to start looking.

  ‘Lean on the odontologist, would you, Rose? Hard. Until we get an ID, we can’t even begin to trace the threads back to our current investigation. I need to know who he is right now if I’m going to prevent another killing.’

  52

  Friday, 1 September 2017

  Rory

  Rory just wanted it to end. The heat. This case. The office politics. It all made getting out of bed in the mornings that much harder. He wasn’t often late but, of course, the one morning he was, Francis was already in, looking freshly scrubbed in a pristine shirt, syphoning black coffee from a large takeaway cup. Rory watched him add some information to the whiteboard under the heading ‘Itchenor bones’, then quickly assign a string of tasks to the members of the team who were already in.

  ‘The clock’s ticking,’ he said, addressing the room and, it seemed to Rory, him in particular. ‘It’s the Speed Trials tomorrow – the town’ll be crowded, and it’ll be our attacker’s perfect opportunity to strike again. Let’s stop him before he gets the chance.’

  The boss’s change of demeanour was reflected in the incident room, where activity suddenly seemed to ramp up a gear. Now, rather than a graveyard, it was a hive, with the team following up on every scrap of evidence offered by the Itchenor bones, by Lou Riley’s scene of attack, and by the increasing level of detail they were digging up on the three dead girls. Even Rory found himself ploughing into the case files with a renewed sense of urgency.

  Francis crooked a finger at Rory, beckoning him into the small corner office.

  ‘Any sign of Alex Mullins yet?’

  There had been an APW – all ports warning – on Mullins since the attack on Lou Riley, and finding him was a priority Rory had set the uniform branch.

  ‘No, but the woodentops couldn’t find . . .’

  Francis cut through his comment. ‘Keep ’em on it, though I’m not convinced he’s our man.’

  That Francis had thought this had been obvious for some time, but it was the first time he’d had the balls to say it out loud.

  ‘That leaves us with no one.’

  ‘Then we’ve got to work harder and pull all the stops out.’ Francis looked at him and sighed. ‘We’ve got to work together as a team, Rory. I don’t know what I did to get on the wrong side of you along the way, but believe me we’re not enemies – and we can on
ly succeed jointly.’

  That came out of nowhere and Rory wasn’t quite sure how to respond. He cleared his throat.

  ‘I’m right though, aren’t I?’ said Francis.

  Rory nodded. He’d had to admit to himself that he’d been impressed with the way Francis had deciphered the UV tattoos to discover the map and then the skeleton. At last things seemed to be stirring in the case.

  ‘But there’s still a hell of a long way to go.’

  Francis tilted his head in agreement. ‘When’s the appointment with that art-college woman?’

  ‘Faye Roderick? In ten minutes.’

  ‘Good.’

  Faye Roderick was the principal at the Brighton College of Art. As well as getting a list of all the girls who attended the college, Francis wanted to see if she could suggest any link between the three dead girls apart from the fact that they all knew Alex Mullins and Ben King.

  While Francis checked his email, Rory went back out to the incident room.

  ‘Angie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Tracked down Lou Riley’s parents yet?’

  ‘I’ve got an address for them. Tony and I are going to go and see them in a minute.’

  Tony and Angie – still glued together at the hip. That was another problem brewing, but now wasn’t the time.

  ‘Dig around a bit and find out who she was dating, and if she ever had anything going with Alex Mullins or Ben King.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘We need to go, boss,’ said Rory, sticking his head back into Francis’s office.

  The art college was on Grand Parade, just around the corner from the station, so they walked. Having just put his jacket on, Rory peeled it off again almost as soon as they were outside. The heat was smothering. What had he been thinking?

  Ten minutes later, they were ushered into a bright, cluttered office on the ground floor of the modern School of Arts building. Faye Roderick stood up to shake hands with them as they introduced themselves, then invited them to sit down opposite her desk. She was a tall woman with spiralling blonde hair and a narrow face – and she was dressed in a sharply tailored skirt and a sleeveless silk blouse. The jacket to match the skirt was draped over the back of her chair. To Rory, she looked more like a bank manager than custodian of the next generation of artists.