by Lisa Hartley
Double Dealing
Lisa Hartley
Also by Lisa Hartley:
On Laughton Moor – available in paperback and on Kindle.
Double Dealing: A Detective Sergeant Catherine Bishop Novel
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons either living or dead or to actual events or circumstances is entirely coincidental.
Authors note: Northolme, its residents and its police officers do not exist and although some of the locations used do, they are used here in a purely fictional context. Although Lincolnshire Police is obviously a real organisation, it has no affiliation with this book.
All rights reserved.
© Lisa Hartley 2015
Cover art designed by paperandsage.com
For Tracy
1
Midnight. She was cold, her shivering uncontrollable. She hunched on the filthy carpet, her arms wrapped around her knees, nausea rising in her throat. The two men who had collected her were somewhere in the house, though she hadn’t seen them for a while. They’d given her water and food but had left her alone now in this awful room after showing her where the toilet was, the bowl lined with plastic sheeting. She knew only too well what they were waiting for. Blinking tears from her eyes, she wished she had never agreed to this. It had been terrifying, from the moment she’d said she would do it to arriving here, grubby, humiliated and longing to be at home. Her stomach was bloated and felt enormous. She shifted her weight, trying to find a position that was a little more comfortable but it was impossible. Sniffing again, she wiped the tears away with the back of her hand. It would be worth it. She was so nearly there now, and then it would be okay. It would be over and she could go home. Trying to relax, to allow nature to take its course, she stretched out her legs. There was a buzzing sound in her head, louder and louder, and she raised a trembling hand, trying to swat the noise away as if it were an annoying house fly. It didn’t work. The sound grew louder. She moaned a little, swiping at her ears with her hands.
There was a sudden explosion of colour behind her eyes, a kaleidoscope of reds, greens and blues; every shade she’d seen before and some she’d never dreamed of. She felt ill and disorientated, her mind reeling, every sense overwhelmed in a second. Glancing around, she blinked, trying to make sense of what she saw. There were faces, thousands of them, screaming, taunting and mocking. White light blinded her as she tried in vain to stay still. She knew she was falling forward but couldn’t stop herself. She didn’t want her face to make contact with the carpet but there was no way to prevent it happening. The light faded to black and she vomited. Her limbs twitched a few times and then there was nothing.
2
They climbed aboard the bus that would take them over to where the plane stood waiting. Thousands of stars danced in the dark skies above them, the moon bright and the air still warm at ten fifteen in the evening. Catherine Bishop turned to her companion as the driver started the engine and the packed bus began to move.
‘I think we should come back as soon as we can.’
Thomas laughed.
‘How do you think I’m going to be able to afford that? It’d be great, I just need a spare grand or so.’
As they settled into their seats, Catherine sighed in contentment.
‘I love sitting by the window.’
‘I know you do, you big kid. It’s going to be a long flight home in the dark though.’
‘You’ll be all right, you’ll sleep.’ Catherine wriggled until she was comfortable, then adjusted her seatbelt and fastened it. Thomas stowed their rucksacks in the overhead compartment before taking his own seat.
‘I’m so glad we came,’ he said.
‘Egypt is top of my list of favourite holidays.’
‘I’ll have to see how it goes, but I’d love to come back. Maybe in the summer? It would be good to have another holiday to look forward to, time to relax.’
Catherine settled back as the safety video began to play on the monitors.
Catherine’s eyes opened when Thomas nudged her arm. The lights in the cabin were dimmed and the only sound was the noise of the plane’s engines.
‘Look,’ he whispered, pointing towards the window.
Catherine sat up straighter, squinting. As she watched, there was a second’s flash of white, lighting the sky below them.
‘What is it?’
‘Lightning. We’re flying above a storm.’ Thomas leant closer, angling his mobile phone towards the window to capture a photograph of the display, like fireworks that were being lit just for them. Catherine watched in awe as the blackness below was illuminated every few seconds. Thomas was right. The holiday had been a great idea.
She awoke with a jolt as the main lights came back on and the cabin crew manager began her final announcement: ‘Welcome to East Midlands Airport, where the outside temperature is three degrees …’
‘Ugh, no,’ Catherine groaned. She stood up and collected her phone and book from the seat pocket in front of her. ‘I’d just got used to it being at least twenty every day.’
‘Back to the real world now,’ Thomas said, leading the way down the aisle.
A world without Claire, Catherine thought as she followed her brother.
3
Footsteps on the floorboards outside, though she couldn’t hear them. A cough.
‘You all right in there?’
There was a pause, then a head appeared around the door, baseball cap pulled low over the brow.
‘Oh shit.’ He stepped over to her, bending closer, then raising his voice. ‘You need to come in here.’
The other man stomped up the stairs.
‘What’s wrong with you? You want everyone in town to hear?’
He caught sight of the lifeless body slumped on the filthy floor. Middle-aged and wiry, he wrinkled his nose at the smell that filled the room. The younger man was almost wringing his hands.
‘What are we going to do? She’s dead, how can she be? The boss is going to kill us, you know how much that stuff is worth? Not to mention we’ve now got a dead body to sort out. God, she’s been a nightmare from the start, whinging and whining, then we had to rearrange getting her home … ’
‘You can’t blame her for that, it was just bad timing. Look, calm down, will you? Are you sure she’s dead?’
‘I’m not touching her, it looks like she is to me.’
Squatting over the woman on the floor, the older man felt for a pulse in her neck.
‘She’s gone all right.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘I’ll show you.’
Taking a closed knife from his pocket, he exposed the blade and brandished it at his companion, who backed away, shuddering.
‘You’re not seriously going to …’
‘No. You are.’
4
Opening his eyes, Mark Cook felt the enormity of his hangover, groaned and closed them again. As he swallowed, the lingering taste of alcohol and kebab meat almost made him retch. He reached out, fumbling on the bedside table to see if he’d remembered to bring a glass of water to bed with him. No such luck. His mouth was parched and his head pounded. Groaning again, he managed to sit up as rain began pattering the window. The room was dull, the half-drawn curtains blocking what little light there was outside. He leant over the bed, his stomach protesting, a vague memory of dropping his phone on the carpet flitting through his mind. Blinking at the screen, he checked the time: eight thirty-seven am. Lauren would have gone to work. Then he blinked, his stomach tightening as he remembered.
; His wife wouldn’t be at work today.
He stood, head still thumping, and made his way downstairs, downing half a pint of water as soon as he reached the kitchen. He hadn’t wanted to come into the room, not with the smell and the lingering accusations, but he had to. He couldn’t put it off any longer. As he turned to put the empty glass into the sink, it slipped from his grasp, shattering as it hit the tiled floor. With a curse, he bent to pick up the bigger pieces, swearing again when one dug into his thumb. Sucking the droplets of blood from it, he picked his way across the room, avoiding the spatter and mess, to retrieve the dustpan and brush. Wouldn’t do for the cat to get a shard in her paw. He wrapped the fragments in several sheets of newspaper and shoved the lot in the bin. As he turned back, he caught sight of a few droplets of blood on the cupboard handle, more on the floor. Swallowing deeply, nausea climbing his throat, he moved to the sink, took a bucket out from beneath it. He squirted a good measure of bleach inside and turned on the hot tap. Bleach would do the trick. Better not let the cat in.
He mopped the floor and wiped down the cupboards, then washed the table top and legs and the wooden chairs and work surfaces with a spray cleaner that also contained bleach.
Adding to the sweet, sickly smell in the room was the cat litter tray, standing in the corner, needing attention. Sighing, he took the roll of black plastic bin bags from under the sink and emptied the mess into it, his stomach heaving again in protest as he did so. He also removed the head of the mop and dropped it into the bag with the mess from the tray. Nose wrinkling in disgust, he unlocked the back door and dropped the bag onto the path outside, planning to take it as far as the wheeled bin when he was wearing more than a pair of boxer shorts. Another black bin bag that contained his ruined clothes, stained and stinking, sat accusingly beside the back door.
The cat herself sidled up as he was closing the door and he bent to pick her up before she stood on the bleached floor, then turned to find her sachets of food in the cupboard. He set her down outside with her bowl, closed the door and filled the kettle and stood scrolling through Facebook on his phone while he waited for it to boil. Lauren’s last status was a cheery sentence about how much she was looking forward to the weekend. He set the phone on the worktop, his hand trembling.
The house was silent, Lauren’s absence echoing through every room. Mark took his mug of coffee through to the living room, avoiding Lauren’s spot in the middle of the sofa and settling in an armchair. He glanced up at the framed wedding photograph on the wall and Lauren stared back at him, her eyes bright with joy and love. His lips tightened as he thought about the last time he’d seen her, her expression disgusted, accusations falling from her lips. His defensiveness, her disbelief.
His fury.
Mark went back into the kitchen and picked up his phone. He rang his wife’s number, knowing there was no chance of a reply. Blinking back tears, he typed out a text instead: R U OK? Worried xx
She wouldn’t answer, but he had to try, to show that he loved her, was thinking of her. It was all he could do now. He had ruined everything. They had been married just three years, having met at school.
How long should he leave it before he contacted the police?
5
With some swearing, Catherine Bishop managed to persuade her car into a tiny space between a liveried white van and a moped. She slid out of the driver’s seat, then wriggled through the door in undignified fashion, hoping no one was watching her through the tinted windows. Northolme’s police station was an unattractive building, two storeys of scruffy red bricks and peeling paintwork. It faced the main road through town with the grammar school sprawling opposite. On the patchy grass in front of the building, an elderly man was whistling as his Jack Russell emptied its bowels, a copy of one of the more provocative tabloids nestling under his beige rain-coated arm. Catherine gave him a pointed look as the dog straightened. He tutted, taking an age to remove a small plastic bag from his pocket and start bending towards whatever his dog had left behind. The terrier, no doubt feeling lighter, energetically kicked two tufts of grass into the air and one hit its owner square in the face as he neared the ground. Catherine hid a smile and hurried towards the main entrance, a cascade of swearing from the dog owner following her. She took a deep breath. This is it then. Come on, you’re absolutely fine, she told herself.
The desk sergeant, Rich Smithies, tapped his watch.
‘What time do you call this?’
‘Half twelve, what time do you call it? We only got home in the early hours,’ Catherine replied. She leant over and helped herself to a sherbet lemon from the bag Smithies was trying to conceal behind a pen pot on the front desk.
‘Oi,’ he protested as Catherine flicked the wrapper in the general direction of his bin.
‘You need to find a better hiding place than that, Rich,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Bunch of criminals in here, you know.’
Through the battered double doors and up the stairs, the worn carpet almost trodden through in places. A landing at the top where a hot drinks machine hummed away to itself. Next to that, another machine selling crisps and sweets and one filled with cold drinks jostled for space.
There was a canteen down in the bowels of the station, but these machines were quicker for a snack. That the hot drinks machine produced the same mid brown slurry whichever button you pressed was a minor point. Through another set of double doors and into the CID office. Whiteboards, filing cabinets, desks, all looking as if they belonged in a skip rather than a busy police station.
‘Afternoon, Sarge.’ Detective Constable Chris Rogers grinned as she walked through the door. ‘Did you miss us?’
‘Constantly. Every second was a nightmare.’ She pulled a face at him. ‘Yeah, about as much as you missed me.’
His laughter followed her to her desk. She sat down, the threadbare blue seat creaking in protest. Detective Constable Anna Varcoe appeared in front of her.
‘Was that your chair? All-inclusive food for a week … ?’
‘Funny. You should have seen the cakes though.’
Anna nodded towards the square of work surface that served as their office kitchen. No one trusted the hot drinks machine; one taste of its interchangeable brown watery beverages was definitely enough.
‘I bet it was amazing. Tea?’
Catherine switched on her computer and monitor, which took its time to start up, wheezing like an ailing asthmatic.
‘Go on then, thanks. What’s been happening?’
Before Anna could reply, the doors at the other end of the office were flung open and Detective Chief Inspector Keith Kendrick strode into the room. He was a big man, well over six feet tall, with a voice to match his stature.
‘Detective Sergeant Bishop. We’ve been pining away without you.’ He waggled shaggy eyebrows at her.
‘How’s it been here?’ she asked.
Kendrick snorted.
‘Let’s go through to my office and I’ll update you. It’s been non-stop thrills, I’ll tell you that much.’
‘Really?’ Catherine followed him across the room.
‘No, not really. We’ve had Willy Moffatt in the cells for a start.’
Catherine groaned.
‘Let me guess - flashing little Willy again?’
He screwed up his face.
‘In a nutshell, as it were, yes. He even did a dance this time so it jiggled around a bit. Three old ladies at a bus stop. One had a camera phone that her grandson had given her and took a decent close-up, so he couldn’t really argue.’
They reached Kendrick’s office door and he gestured for Catherine to go inside.
‘He never argues, I think he’s quite proud of himself.’
‘God knows why,’ Kendrick sniffed, heaving himself into the chair behind his desk. ‘Little Willy is right.’
Catherine smiled at the man who sat in the corner of the office, flicking through a notepad. ‘There can’t be anyone in town that hasn’t seen it by now,’ she said.
‘Good afternoon, DI Knight.’
Detective Inspector Jonathan Knight smiled, not quite meeting her eyes. ‘You’re looking better, Catherine.’
‘I feel it.’
Kendrick leant back in his chair, counting on his fingers as he spoke.
‘Ongoing cases: Willy Moffatt – I’ve mentioned him, indecent exposure and generally being a mucky little so and so. The Paul Hughes murder – Jonathan can fill you in on that. A domestic in Harborough Street – husband and wife brawling in the house, took it out into the street and he ended up cracking his head on the pavement. It’s a messy case and we’re trying to charge them both, but he’s still in hospital. The muggings – that started before you went away,’ Catherine nodded. ‘Well, there was another one, got away with a new iPhone and a wallet full of cash this time. Same crap description: slim bloke, hooded top, nasty-looking knife. We’ve got a picture from the CCTV, but it’s useless at best. And the rest … well, as I say, ongoing cases.’ He grinned. ‘Bet you’re delighted to be back.’
‘Have I been away?’
Kendrick picked up a pen up from his desktop and tapped it against his teeth as he studied her.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked eventually.
Catherine looked away, over at the bedraggled pot plant that sat on the top of a blue metal filing cabinet, then at the blind that was higher at one end than the other. Finally, her gaze to fell to her lap.
‘I’m okay, thanks. Better.’
‘The Super’s been asking after you too, wanting to know how you’ve been.’
‘That’s … that’s kind of her.’
Kendrick lowered his voice a little.
‘There’s been nothing in the press, by the way. The Pollard case is over, closed. I know you want to come back to work and just get on with it, and I think that’s for the best. The Paul Hughes case is still ongoing, but … I told the Super I thought your leave would have done you the world of good.’
‘And it has.’ Her voice was firm.
