Gaslighting: A British Crime Thriller (Doc Powers & D.I. Carver Investigate Book 3)

by Will Patching

  Smith stood upright again, having stooped to place the bag where Billy had indicated, but he still had his back to his precocious pupil – now right behind him. Billy’s left arm snaked around Smiffy’s neck and his right hand simultaneously clamped the saturated cloth over Smiffy’s nose. A brief struggle ensued, with Smith’s fingers clawing at Billy’s arms, but within seconds the feeble motion ceased. Billy was thrilled to feel his victim wriggling, electric with fear, then sagging, unconscious. He dropped Smiffy to the floor, and heard the thud as his tutor’s head slammed against the concrete.

  Careful, son. Don’t mess him up more than you need to…

  A karate blow or stranglehold could have easily knocked Smiffy cold, but both techniques held the possibility of unintended death rather than unconsciousness. The idea was not to harm him any more than necessary, nor leave any clues that he had been held against his will. For what Billy had in mind, Smiffy needed to be alive.

  No worries, Uncle. Smiffy’ll be messed up far worse by the time I’m finished with him.

  With almost a tender touch, Billy pulled off Smith’s jacket, took the envelope from the pocket, then stripped his victim until he was just in underpants and socks. He folded the jacket and bagged it with the other clothes for later use, sniggering at the thought of how he would secure his victim – also for later use…

  Gramps favoured reinforced packaging tape to seal the stored boxes – the ones Billy had ripped open earlier in the year – and had plenty of it stored in a bag on the shelf. Now he used a roll to bind Smiffy’s arms and legs, hog-tying him before pulling him into a sitting position. More tape was wound around Smiffy’s neck, securing him to an old cast iron boiler pipe affixed to the wall next to the sack of ANFO, then Billy taped the man’s eyes and mouth, leaving his nose free to continue breathing. Smith was still out cold.

  Many things had not worked out as planned, and the lingering prospect that Powers had not been the one to die on the boat was still bugging Billy. His mother had seen fit to get sober just in time to totally screw his plans for Nana too. She was probably no longer off her head either as he hadn’t been able to administer any drugs since Saturday. He had been certain the shit smeared bedroom and bathroom would have been the final straw, enough to convince his mother that the old dear would be better looked after in that care home. He had prepared everything, had all the papers filled out ready for her to sign – had been badgering her for months to commit to dumping the dopey old bat. It was too late for that now.

  How did it all go so wrong?

  He leaned down as he heard Smith groaning, gradually coming to, and grabbed the envelope, thinking he would put it back in his room before heading out this evening. As for all the things that had conspired to screw up his day, well, he decided, none of it mattered. He would revise his plans and Nana would just have to take her chances, it was as simple as that. And now, he had an ace up his sleeve.

  Well, in his cellar.

  ‘You’ll live, Smiffy…’ Billy patted his unconscious victim on his head, tittering as he added, ‘But not for long!’

  ***

  Suzie drove south from Wallingford while her mother prattled on about the views of the Thames and the picturesque countryside on their way home. Although she nodded and gave the occasional grunt in acknowledgement, her mind was elsewhere. The damning email from the laboratory had arrived as she had been about to tuck into her lunch.

  The best piece of news had been at the top of her mother’s report – tests had confirmed there were no signs of dementia and Suzie had been delighted to share that information. Nana had ordered a sherry to celebrate while Suzie sipped her sparkling water, trying to blot out the other details she had scanned in her mother’s report. She desperately wanted to read both sets of results, to absorb the details properly, but decided to wait until she was home.

  The email contained one other reassuring bit of news that jumped out at her during her brief scan of the documents. The test results from the bottles. At least Billy had not been lying about that, and had ‘only’ been feeding her Temazepam, not rat poison as she had originally assumed.

  That was the extent of any positive news from today’s outing. Suzie’s appetite shrivelled in the few moments she spent flicking through the rest of their results – had to put her smartphone away, otherwise she would have exploded with rage. Her mother was having such a great time, thoroughly enjoying her food, and was borderline radiant as she reminisced about previous visits to the pub with Suzie’s father. It seemed to help her mother finally come to terms with her loss, and Suzie didn’t want to dispel her good mood.

  By the time they arrived home, Nana had piped down, tired from her day’s adventures. She said she was heading to bed for a doze, which suited Suzie just fine.

  Time to think.

  As they stepped over the threshold, Suzie spotted the note lying on the edge of the doormat alongside a business card, as if brushed there by the door being opened. Her mother hadn’t noticed and was already clambering up the stairs, but Suzie recognised the printed emblem on the card even before stooping to pick up the items.

  The Metropolitan Police?

  She had dealt with them before, in the aftermath of that last night in her Chelsea home, but this was unexpected. The card was from a Detective Chief Inspector Jack Carver. As was the note. It was scribbled on a scrap from a pocket book, and the words set her nerves jangling.

  Please call me immediately you read this, Mrs Leech. I need to speak to you urgently about your son, Billy. Thank you. DCI Carver

  Was this about the attack on Professor Maddox’s car and driver? Surely a senior detective from London would not be involved in such a trivial matter.

  What else has Billy been up to?

  Suzie went to the kitchen and sat at the table, then laid out the card with the note and placed her phone beside them. She was tempted to call the detective right away, but decided to review the contents of the lab reports before doing so.

  With a sickening dread squirming through her bowels, she opened the email and took her time reading through the results. The implications were even worse than she had imagined on first skimming through the contents. The covering letter had been a shock too. The clinic suggested both Suzie and her mother would benefit from attending a rehabilitation centre, and provided links to several local establishments offering facilities designed to help ‘alcoholics, drug addicts and other individuals with problems related to substance abuse’.

  Suzie was prepared to hold her hands up to being guilty, but her mother? No. However, the clinic could only go by the results they had found, and their analyses suggested otherwise.

  Traces of LSD had been found in her mother’s blood, along with a range of anti-depressants, opiates and the sleeping pill, Temazepam. Suzie’s results were similar, but without the LSD. Where had that come from? And how did it get into her mother’s blood – along with the opiates? Maybe the latter could be explained. Perhaps some of Nana’s anti-depressants contained them, but Suzie knew in her heart that it was her linctus that had somehow made its way into her mother’s body.

  And the LSD?

  Had Billy been doctoring Nana’s food or drink with that hallucinogenic? And why?

  He had admitted feeding his mother Temazepam, so the idea was no longer as outrageous as it would have seemed just a couple of days before.

  Hallucinations. Poor Mother.

  Suzie picked up Jack Carver’s card and fondled her phone. She needed help to understand what was happening, but would the detective be sympathetic? Doubtful, given the terse note. Just for some smashed headlights.

  And a grown man felled by a single karate kick to the head.

  Billy’s face that night, swooped at her again, contorted in fury. She had been shocked by the degree of violence, delivered so casually.

  Just like his father.

  Oh, God help me!

  She fingered the phone, wondering what to do, then decided. Before she saw this policeman, she w
ould talk to Billy. Confront him again, tonight, with hard evidence of what he had been doing to them both.

  What else have you been up to, son?

  Suzie had not been inside his bedroom for over two years. He had insisted he could keep it tidy and clean, that she didn’t need to bother – just as she hadn’t with so many other maternal duties. And anyway, he didn’t want her poking around in his things, he’d said. In her drugged state, that had seemed like a decent enough bargain.

  Not any more.

  Suzie swept the three items off the table into her handbag before dumping it in a drawer in her bedroom, then continued up the top flight of stairs to the attic. The skull and cross bones logo, outlined in black on a vivid yellow background, was stuck to Billy’s bedroom door above a warning, stencilled in red, decorated with blood coloured droplets:

  Keep out – on pain of death!

  The warning had not been there the last time Suzie had ventured this far up the stairs, and most mothers would think little of it – such exaggeration was only to be expected from any normal adolescent boy.

  But Billy’s anything but normal.

  For Suzie, the message resonated in a disturbing way, and she hesitated as she went to grasp the door handle. Perhaps Billy was inside. Could he be back from his outing with Mr Smith already? She knocked, just in case, with a gentle tap on the door, and half whispered to him.

  ‘Billy? Are you in there?’

  He occasionally slept in the afternoons, blaming his growth spurts for the need to rest, so she tried to make as little sound as she could while turning the knob, telling herself it was for his benefit, rather than to appease her own timidity. The latch disengaged but the door would not budge.

  Locked?

  Since when had Billy taken to locking his door?

  This time her fist hammered on the wooden panelling, her voice angry and no longer a whisper.

  ‘Billy! You open this door, right now!’

  With no answer forthcoming, she turned and jogged down the stairs to the kitchen to search for the key. Billy may not have realised, but her father had kept a skeleton key that would unlock all internal doors – a safety measure she remembered he’d insisted on from when she was a small child. It took her a few minutes of frenetic scrabbling in the drawers to locate it, then she stormed back up to the attic room, fitted the key into the lock and burst in.

  The evil that greeted her almost bowled her straight back down the stairs again, and she had to hold on to the door handle to steady herself. An involuntary gasp at the sight burst from her throat, then her legs gave way. She collapsed to her hands and knees, her back arching as caustic projectile vomit streamed from her belly and bounced across the floorboards beneath her.

  ***

  Doc was beginning to wonder if Jack would burn a hole in his lounge carpet, pacing back and forth as he was, propelled by anger and frustration.

  ‘Sit down, Jack. We’ll just have to wait.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Jack stopped pacing, turned his back on Doc and peered out of the patio windows at the two detectives at the end of the garden. ‘We’ve been waiting over an hour for the Keystone Cops to get their arses back in here… I can’t believe they’re still treating us like suspects.’

  Doc patted the sofa cushion next to him. ‘Come on, just sit. Try to relax–’

  ‘RELAX?’ The detectives must have heard Jack’s roar, their attention momentarily on the house before shifting back to the police tug hoisting the remains of the burnt-out boat onto a barge. Jack clasped his hands over his head and rubbed at his scalp, took a few paces towards the sofa and tried to smile at Doc as he apologised. ‘Sorry, mate. I’m just… I dunno. My daughter almost died yesterday. And she hates me for what happened to Felix.’

  Doc had not been listening to the phone call Jack had made while driving them back from Newbury, but had heard Jack cursing when he’d been cut off by his wife immediately after he asked – then demanded – to speak to Sally. That was shortly before they arrived back here, only to be told that Charlie was off the case and the two detectives now engrossed in the recovery of the boat were investigating the crime.

  According to Charlie, the divers had recovered an item that confirmed this was a deliberate act of arson, but the detectives had stonewalled them, and told Jack and Doc to wait in the lounge until they were ready to interview them. Jack’s allies, Charlie and her sergeant, had been called back to their office, leaving just the police divers and detectives at the scene. The tug and barge had arrived shortly after Doc and Jack pulled into the driveway, and they had been forced to wait in the house, and do no more than watch, ever since.

  Doc had been trying to calm Jack from the moment he first blew up at the other detectives, yelling his suspicions about Billy Leech in response to their instructions to remain on the premises. It didn’t help when the lead detective, DI Hammond, a gentleman with all the charm of a flatulent horse’s rear end, had said, ‘Your boss, Chief Superintendent Dawson, warned us about you, Carver. She said you’d want to dominate things, take over, even though this is outside your patch and you’re supposed to be on holiday. She told me to tell you that if you interfere with our investigation in any way, she’ll have your badge.’

  Doc had grabbed Jack’s right arm, saw his fist balling, ready to swing at the other policeman’s head. It had been just enough to prevent the assault, but Jack’s anger had been brewing like a volcano ever since.

  ‘We’ll just have to do things their way, Jack. And I doubt Billy will be going anywhere. Probably assumed we’d think it was an accident.’ Doc didn’t really believe that. He too was convinced the boy was at the heart of these terrible events, especially after their chat with Dooley and Richardson. The dead pets were a warning, a threat, so Doc felt sure that Billy meant for him to connect the dots. Eventually. ‘I doubt he has any inkling that he’s on your radar for this already.’

  Jack finally let go of his head as he dropped to the sofa beside Doc, breathing a weary sigh.

  ‘I s’pose you’re right.’

  ‘We’ll get him. Just play along with these two, and if they won’t listen, we’ll continue making our own enquiries. Sound fair?’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks, Doc.’

  Just then, Hammond strolled into the lounge, carrying an evidence bag with what looked to Doc like the boat’s petrol filler cap attached to part of the pipe. He chucked it on to the coffee table in front of his ‘suspects’ with a theatrical flourish, and waited for a response.

  ‘What the fuck?’ Jack grabbed the bag to inspect the contents through the clear plastic. ‘Someone’s welded a sparkplug inside it.’

  Doc could see the lock barrel had been drilled out, and the electrical component poked through from the underside of the cap. It was not a very subtle modification, the tip of the plug was visible, poking proud of the chrome domed upper part of the cap, but creating the thing was not a five-minute operation. Surely no one could have modified it on board the boat – using a welding torch by the open filler pipe. He was about to say so, but the detective had rather more pressing questions of his own.

  ‘According to the fire officers, this was connected by a high-tension lead rigged through to the ignition. Now, can either of you clever fellows tell me why the boat owner didn’t notice a bloody great wire hanging off the filler cap of his petrol tank? Especially with the brilliant Detective Jack Carver wandering around the place all weekend?’ Doc and Jack exchanged glances, but neither of them had a viable explanation. The cocky detective continued. ‘Or why a bloke with no boating experience, no skipper’s licence, was sent aboard this potential fire bomb, with the key in his hand. And–’

  ‘Now, hang on a minute–’

  Doc could feel Vesuvius rumbling beside him, and his hand was on Jack’s arm again, silently urging his friend to maintain his self-control.

  ‘And the bloke in question happens to be the same young man the so-called brilliant detective was mouthing off about just last week. The newly promoted De
tective Chief Inspector was at the pub, celebrating the news of his elevated status…’ The policeman, trying hard to look threatening but failing badly, took a pace forward, bent slightly from the waist and put his face close to Jack’s as he spelt out the accusation, waggling his finger under Jack’s nose. ‘Telling any of his colleagues who could be bothered to listen to his drunken ranting, how much he despised his daughter’s fiancé, and how he was dreading spending several days on his mate’s boat getting to know the lad.’

  ‘I don’t think this is helpful, Detective.’ Doc glanced at Jack, could see him trying to contain the pressure building inside, could see the blood surging into his neck and face. Doc gave his right forearm a reassuring squeeze while trying to smooth things. ‘You can’t seriously think Jack–’

  The detective ignored Doc, and spoke over him, still with his accusatory finger in Jack’s face. ‘I could wring his bloody neck. Isn’t that what you said, Carver?’

  ‘Jack…’ Doc held on to his friend’s arm, the muscles beneath his fingers tense and rigid.

  ‘And, this.’ He straightened, took his notebook from his jacket pocket, and made a show of checking what was written there before he added, ‘I’d happily murder the bastard… If I thought I could get away with it. So, DCI Carver. Did you? Murder your future son-in-law?’ He stared at Jack, contempt rippling his mouth. ‘With your own daughter aboard–?’

  Jack rocketed off the sofa, the large muscles of his thighs powering his upper body at his unprepared colleague. He almost dislocated Doc’s shoulder as his arm arced forward and up, still with Doc’s restraining hand attached, barely diminishing the power from Jack’s fist as it connected with the tip of Hammond’s chin.