Who’s Next?
A completely gripping and unputdownable crime thriller
Chirs Merritt
Books by Chris Merritt
Detectives Zac Boateng and Kat Jones series
Bring Her Back
Last Witness
Life or Death
Detectives Lockhart and Green series
Knock Knock
Contents
Day One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Day Two
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Day Three
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Day Four
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Day Five
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Day Six
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Day Seven
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Day Eight
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Day Nine
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Day Ten
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Day Eleven
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Day Twelve
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Day Thirteen
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Day Fourteen
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Day Fifteen
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Day Sixteen
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Day Seventeen
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Day Eighteen
Chapter 93
Ten Days Later
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Two Months Later
Chapter 96
Hear More from Chris
Books by Chris Merritt
A Letter From Chris
Knock Knock
Bring Her Back
Last Witness
Life or Death
Acknowledgments
*
For DC, friends twenty years.
Day One
One
For as long as I can remember, I wanted to know what it would be like to kill someone.
I’m not exactly sure when I was first aware of that desire to take life. I guess it goes way back, though. One of my earliest memories is of turning over a rock in the park to find a whole world of insects underneath, then squealing in delight as I stamped them all to death while they tried to flee. I hadn’t learned that from anyone. I worked out for myself how much fun it was.
A few years later, I developed a fascination with murder in films. My dad owned a huge collection of those old video cassettes and, because he was always out, I watched them whenever I wanted. Whether it was an action flick with Schwarzenegger or Stallone gunning down hapless enemies, or a slasher movie with plenty of up-close blood and guts, killing seemed about the most exciting thing anyone could do. I knew I had to try it someday.
As a teenager, I considered joining the army – even the police – and becoming a sniper or whatever. A job where, if you shot the right person, they’d give you a medal. But I couldn’t have dealt with the discipline, the endless orders, the early mornings. There were quicker and easier ways to get a kick out of life. And, the older I got, the more I found.
My lifestyle made the impulse to murder recede for a while. It never completely went away, though. It just lay dormant inside me until the day that everything fell apart. Until my other sources of pleasure and respect were destroyed. Then, nothing was holding me back any longer. More than that, I had a reason to kill. I knew it was time to give in to my fantasy.
Last night, I finally did. Now I’ve popped my cherry, I’m not going to stop. I’ve already gone past the point of no return. There are four more people who deserve to die, who need to take the blame for what happened. And, since I’ve found a new purpose in life, even that may not be the end of it.
It’ll only end when they catch me.
If they catch me.
Two
The older man squinted at the photograph, frowning with effort that turned his craggy face into a mass of lines like a dry riverbed. Then he handed the picture back.
‘Nope. Haven’t seen her.’
‘You sure about that?’ Detective Inspector Dan Lockhart held up the image of his wife, Jess. ‘Have another look.’
The guy blew out his cheeks, shook his head. ‘Sorry, mate. Can’t help you.’
A dozen people had already said the same thing today.
‘Thanks anyway.’
The older man nodded once, then turned back towards his boathouse.
Lockhart re-folded and pocketed Jess’s picture. It was eleven years old now, and he imagined she’d have changed a lot in that time. But he’d bet her piercing blue eyes, wide smile and the dimples in her cheeks would be just the same.
The photo was taken only a few weeks before Jess had disappeared while he was on a six-month tour of duty with the British Army in Afghanistan. She’d simply vanished, and no one had a clue what had happened to her. There was talk of a mental health episode, of accidental drowning in the Thames, even abduction and trafficking, slavery. Lockhart didn’t know what to believe. All he knew was that, one day, Jess hadn’t answered his weekly scheduled telephone call from the camp. Lockhart’s mum, Iris, had gone over to check their tiny flat in Hammersmith. The door was open, but Jess wasn’t there.
Lockhart still lived in the cramped, noisy apartment they’d bought together. As far as he was concerned, the place was their home, preserved like a time capsule from the day Jess vanished, ready for when she returned. He was pretty much the only person who believed that would happen. The
police had long since given up an active investigation and shelved her file. Even Jess’s own family thought she was dead, now. But Lockhart wasn’t ready to stop looking for her. Especially when he had a new lead.
This was the tenth time he’d visited the fishing port of Whitstable in Kent over the past three months. If his work in a murder squad didn’t often mean seven-day weeks, he would’ve come here more. Late last year, a woman had replied to his post on a missing persons website, saying she thought she’d seen Jess in Whitstable, perhaps two years ago. Walking in the harbour, alone. There was no more detail than that. Yet, it was possible: Jess had spent a few summers here with her family as a child. She had a connection to the place. So far, though, Lockhart hadn’t found anyone else who’d caught sight of her. But he had to keep trying. As his dear old mum liked to remind him whenever they got together, her son didn’t know the meaning of the words ‘give up’. Just like his old man, she’d say, right up until the day he died.
Lockhart walked away from East Quay, past the surfboard shacks, seafood restaurants and beach huts. He felt deflated at his lack of progress and wondered if he should fetch his wetsuit from the car and dunk himself in the sea for half an hour. Now, in mid-February, it’d be cold as ice. But he could deal with that. The mile he swam every week in the Thames – freezing, whatever the weather – always made him feel better.
Behind the buildings, he could hear waves breaking and spreading over the sand. Seagulls cried out, buffeted by the salt breeze as they circled the water. For a few seconds, he just listened. That was one thing Dr Lexi Green had told him during their therapy sessions last year: be in the moment.
Over a period of months, Lockhart had opened up to Green about his mental health in a way he hadn’t done with anyone else – even his mum – since Jess had gone missing. Despite the short time he’d known her, Green had become one of the people he trusted most in his life. That was why, last autumn, he’d brought her in to help profile a serial killer whom the media liked to call the Throat Ripper.
The case had nearly cost the young psychologist her life, and he felt responsible for that. Since she wasn’t his therapist anymore, they hadn’t spoken in a while and Lockhart wondered how she was doing. No, that wasn’t accurate. After what had happened, he needed to know. It’d been too long. Following the impulse, he took out his phone and called her.
Waiting for Green to pick up, he suddenly became unsure of himself. What would he say to her? How’s it going? Have you got Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder now, like me? Then her voicemail cut in. He didn’t leave a message.
Lockhart tried to bring himself back to the sound of the waves, but was still thinking about Green minutes later when his phone rang. It was Detective Sergeant Maxine Smith.
‘Sorry to bother you, guv,’ she said. ‘I know you’d rostered a rest day.’
‘Don’t worry about it, Max.’ He wasn’t really resting, and she wouldn’t call unless it was serious. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Body’s been found in Wimbledon. Looks like one for us. Boss wants to know if you can come.’
‘If I can come?’
‘Fair one, I’m putting it more politely than he did. You in town?’
‘No.’
‘How fast can you get here?’
‘Couple of hours.’ He checked his watch. ‘Hour and a bit if I do a ton on the motorway.’
‘I’ll text you the location.’
Lockhart rang off and jogged to his car at the double march his old regiment used when tabbing.
It was a matter of when, not if, he’d be back here to look for Jess.
Three
Dr Lexi Green stole a glance at the clock. Five minutes to go. It wasn’t that she was bored, exactly, although the private client she was seeing during her lunch hour did repeat himself. A lot. Lexi’s theory was that this repetition was part of the guy’s problem: he was stuck in a trauma-related cycle of depression. She understood why he was ruminating about recent events, and it was her job to fix that. All fine. It was just the subject matter that bothered her.
The client, Oliver Soames, couldn’t move on from the loss of his baby. More precisely, he was fixated on the fact that his ex-partner had aborted her – or, as he put it, ‘my’ – baby without telling him. The scenario wasn’t exactly uncommon, but it was just too close to home for Lexi. In her senior year at Princeton, she’d terminated her own unplanned pregnancy. It was the hardest decision she’d ever taken. She had been too young; not ready to have a kid. She’d made the right call, though it’d ended her long-term relationship.
Those were the events which, seven years ago, had brought her back here from the States, where she’d spent the previous decade trailing round after her American dad as the US Air Force moved him from base to base. There was also the fact that her kid brother, Shep, had died ten months earlier of a drug overdose which Lexi blamed herself for not preventing. After that year, she didn’t want to stay in the States anymore.
Fortunately for Lexi, she had a UK passport, thanks to her British mom. So, she’d moved here, to London, where she was born during the time her dad was stationed at the US embassy. A gigantic, anonymous city where no one knew her, and she could just start over. Like none of it had happened.
‘I mean, sometimes, you know, I just feel so… angry.’ Oliver was clenching his fist in the low armchair opposite her. ‘Not one word of discussion and then just, like, by the way, your kid’s dead.’ He slapped the armrest. ‘Dead.’
‘That sounds as if it was really tough to deal with. I’m wondering, though, what we can do?—’
‘They give you special training in that, do they?’
‘Uh, I’m sorry?’
‘Understatements. How to make the understatement of the century with sincerity.’
Jeez. Way to go, Lexi. Not exactly what you’d call a textbook therapeutic alliance. She took a breath. ‘I’m just trying to understand how you’re feeling, Olly. So I can help. That’s all.’
‘You can help by telling me how to not be so bloody depressed all the time!’
Lexi’s phone vibrated in her pocket. It kept going: a call. She ignored it.
‘OK,’ she said calmly. ‘I can see that this is really bothering you, so why don’t we just—’
‘We should’ve got a surrogate mother,’ he stated, his gaze shifting from Lexi to the hospital lawns outside her window. ‘Just paid someone else to have it for us. Simple. Then none of this would’ve happened.’
Or maybe you should’ve talked to your partner about how she was feeling, Lexi thought, sensing her frustration tip into anger. And what she wanted for her body. Following the assessment a few weeks back, Lexi knew she never should’ve accepted Oliver Soames as a client. His problems were too much like those of her own past. She couldn’t maintain the non-judgemental stance that was essential to therapy. But private clients paid well, and Lexi had bills. So…
A few minutes later, when Oliver had left, Lexi pulled out her phone. Her heart jumped a little when she saw who the missed call was from. Dan Lockhart. Her ex-patient, for whom she’d developed feelings that even she couldn’t quite understand. A man to whom she owed her life. She was lucky to have escaped the so-called Throat Ripper. Several others hadn’t, including someone very close to her. Since then, there’d been no contact between her and Dan for months. Why was he calling her now? He hadn’t left a voicemail.
Lexi wanted to call him back but, after everything that’d happened last year, she didn’t know how to begin the conversation. In any case, she had another client coming in a few minutes. There wouldn’t be enough time to speak properly, she told herself. Putting her phone in a drawer, she selected the manila file of notes for her next patient.
But her mind was still on Dan.
Four
Lockhart parked his old Land Rover Defender by the cluster of police vehicles at the edge of the woods. The track between the trees was so narrow that the only way to reach the crime scene was on foot. In less tha
n a minute’s walk from the road, he could’ve forgotten that he was in London at all. It amazed him that these pockets of forest still existed in the city. On another day, he might’ve enjoyed a hike on Wimbledon Common.
As the twisting path straightened ahead of him, Lockhart saw the large white tent that would be covering the body. A perimeter had been established with blue-and-white tape, beyond which a couple of gazebos sheltered boxes of equipment from the drizzle. A few scene of crime officers in pale blue hooded suits moved between the structures, stepping on raised metal plates as they entered the red-and-white inner cordon around the tent.
Who's Next?: A completely gripping and unputdownable crime thriller (Detective Lockhart and Green Book 2) Page 1
