Tethered to the Dead: DS Lasser series volume three (The DS Lasser series. Book 3)

by Rob Roughley

  Lasser felt his stomach plummet. ‘Jesus.’

  Bannister looked at him and smiled, to Lasser it looked like a horrid parody of the real thing.

  ‘Don’t worry, Sergeant, it isn’t Kelly...’

  ‘Then who the hell is it...?’

  ‘That’s what I want you to find out.’

  ‘But what about Fulcom, I thought you wanted me to track him down?’

  ‘This takes precedence over a dodgy teacher who may have been shagging one of his students, Sergeant.’

  Lasser looked at Bannister, his face grey like discarded ashes, lips tinged blue. He looked on the verge of collapse, a man slowly being dismantled by stress and anguish.

  ‘OK, no problem.’

  ‘I thought it was her,’ he looked up at the darkening sky. ‘I was prepared for it and now this...’ he looked distraught; his eyes squeezed shut in anguish.

  ‘Where’s Suzanne?’

  Bannister sniffed. ‘She went upstairs, in a dreadful state.’

  ‘Hardly surprising.’

  ‘Don’t state the fucking obvious, Lasser. Now get going and...’

  ‘Keep you informed?’

  Bannister nodded, his shoulders slumped, ‘Good man.’

  55

  ‘I feel as if we should be doing something,’ Christy stood at the bedroom window looking at the house opposite. She could see the female police officer standing by the front door, ramrod stiff like a cardboard cut-out of the real thing.

  ‘Come back to bed.’

  She looked over her shoulder; Steve was lying naked on the bed, one arm pillowing his head, the other stroking his erection.

  ‘Honestly, Steve, Jonathan was a friend of yours and all you can think about is sex.’

  He smiled at her and gave a shrug of his shoulders. ‘Hey, Christy, shit happens.’

  She frowned and turned back to the window, she could see someone walking down the drive, a tall man with close-cropped dark hair. As he reached the cone of light he looked up at the window, and Christy took a hesitant backward step. It was as if he were studying her, filing her features away for future attention.

  Unnerved, she pulled the bathrobe tight and moved away from the window to perch on the end of the bed. ‘First, Kelly, and now this, Suzanne must be going out of her mind,’ she chewed at her lip, blond hair rippling across her shoulders in thick waves.

  ‘Yeah well, I wouldn’t go over there offering your condolences.’

  ‘I thought I told you there was nothing going on between me and Jonathan.’

  ‘Hey, it’s not me you have to convince.’

  ‘He was drunk and he made a stupid pass at me and that is all.’

  Sitting up, he swung his legs from the bed, flexed his powerful arms, and turned to her. ‘First the daughter and then her old man,’ his grin widened. ‘A couple of hundred years ago you’d have been burnt at the stake for being a witch.’

  ‘Ha bloody ha.’

  Standing up he stretched his arms toward the ceiling. ‘I still can’t believe you told him about Kelly.’

  Christy pushed a hand through her hair; she could see his body silhouetted against the diminishing light, his erection bobbing up and down as he walked to the en-suite bathroom.

  ‘I did it because I thought it might help,’ she said.

  He stopped and turned. ‘Doing your good deed for the day, is that it?’

  ‘I thought if he told the police then it might...’ her voice faltered.

  ‘Might what?’

  She glanced at him and then looked away, it seemed ridiculous now, a meaningless confession. ‘I don’t know, I thought it might help them in some way.’

  He laughed, a sound laced with mockery. ‘Jesus, Christy, sometimes you can be one dumb bitch,’ he shook his head and disappeared into the bathroom. A few seconds later, she heard him flush the chain and then he wandered back into the room. ‘I mean, his daughter goes missing, so he’s feeling fucking awful, and what do you do? You go over there and tell him his little princess swung both ways.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she could feel herself becoming angry. ‘I thought he had a right to know, so he could tell the police.’

  The room was rapidly growing darker, Steve stood over near the door, a pale shadow against the gloom. ‘So you think she might have been taken by a woman, is that what you’re saying?’

  She shrugged, feeling helpless and foolish. ‘I don’t know, how could I know that, but maybe she’s run away with someone and if it is another girl, then I thought it could be helpful to the police.’

  He walked back to the bed and lay down. ‘I suppose it’s possible. Do you know if he actually got around to telling them?’

  ‘Well if he had, then surely they’d have called round to see me, and since they haven’t then I guess he decided to keep the information to himself.’

  Steve reached out a hand and slid it inside her bathrobe; she could feel his large hand running up and down her thigh.

  ‘Perhaps you should tell them?’ he said in a low voice.

  Christy blanched at the prospect. ‘No way, not after what’s happened, I mean, Suzanne would go mad.’

  She could feel his fingers probing trying to slide between her legs.

  ‘Poor baby, trying to do the right thing and it all goes pear shaped.’

  She clamped her legs tight and slid to the edge of the bed. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  His teeth flashed in the darkness. ‘Maybe your little pocket time-bomb was the last straw for poor old Johnny.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Come on, don’t tell me you hadn’t seen the way he looked at Kelly.’

  Christy stood up, sometimes she hated Steve Reynolds, hated the way his mind worked, the way he would twist things until even the most bizarre notion sounded plausible.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she spat.

  ‘Then again maybe you have to be a male to see these things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Why do you do that, Christy?’

  She looked at him in confusion. ‘Do what?’

  ‘Ask stupid questions, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Jonathan wanted to fuck Kelly so much...’

  ‘You disgusting...’

  ‘I know it and so do you.’

  She looked down; his hand slowly coaxing his erection back to life, the sight of it made her shudder.

  ‘I used to watch him whenever we went around there, when his eyes weren’t fixed on your arse they were on hers.’

  ‘Steve, the man’s dead for God’s sake.’

  ‘Are you denying it,’ he suddenly sat up, his face falling into a pool of moonlight, his eyes locked on her face.

  ‘I...’ she took a backward step, snapping the belt tight around her waist.

  ‘You know it’s the truth, he wanted to fuck you both, and then you go and tell him that his little girl isn’t interested in men, she likes the ladies.’

  ‘Why do you always insist on twisting things, I mean, perhaps you’re getting your own sick fantasies mixed up with his?’

  Reynolds laughed. ‘Any fantasies I have don’t stay fantasies for long.’

  She stood in the middle of the room, silhouetted by the moonlight, looking down at the man on the bed. She watched as he flexed his toes, the erection standing proudly. ‘Are you saying you had sex with Kelly Ramsey?’

  Reynolds waved a languid hand. ‘Hey, that’s for me to know and you to worry about,’ he lay back onto the bed, melting into the shadows.

  56

  Lasser sat outside the cutting room, trying to work out why he had refused the olive branch Cathy had offered. Could it simply be wounded pride, was he that shallow, that petty? He grunted an answer and stretched out his legs. Christ, he felt tired, he tried to work out how long he’d been awake and gave up when his smothered brain refused to do the math. Perhaps he was just pissed because Cathy hadn’t asked him herself, going through a friend, it was almost childish, the
sort of game teenagers would play.

  Maybe the idea had been Sally’s and Cathy had reluctantly agreed. In the end, he supposed it didn’t really matter, he refused to leave himself open to more hurt, more bewilderment. The strip light above his head began to flicker, the light flashing like a strobe at a cheesy disco. It drilled into his brain, setting up the beginnings of a migraine. Closing his eyes, an image of Cathy swam forward as if she’d been waiting in the wings to torment him.

  He’d been the one doing all the chasing, the one holding a pathetic vigil in front of the Outlook screen, checking his mobile, hoping that she’d tried to call and he’d missed it.

  Suddenly, he thought of Bannister and a flame of guilt sprang to life, he was fretting over a relationship that had ended six months ago and his boss was trying to come to terms with the possible death of his only child. Lasser let his mind drift; the Ramseys had seemed like a normal family, but then again what was normal? According to Bannister, Suzanne had doubts about her husband and his love of younger women. Perhaps she’d killed him, maybe they’d argued; after all, the pressure would break even the most solid of relationships. He could see them in his mind’s eye, storming from one room to another, the argument becoming more heated, more hostile as the accusations flooded out. She would accuse him of sleeping with women only a couple of years older than his stepdaughter and he would fire something back at her, something designed to hurt. Lasser’s eyes moved behind closed lids, as if reading from a printed page. One of them had lashed out, perhaps she slapped his face, maybe he slammed her against the wall. Suzanne could have run out into the garden trying to escape as her husband lost the plot. He could see them, two silhouettes, struggling on the lawn, his hands grabbing for her throat, she lashed out, the heavy bottle still grasped in her hand and bang!

  It was plausible, but would she have had the strength to drag him to the hot tub, it seemed unlikely, besides, if it had been an accident or some kind of self-defence gone wrong, then why go to the bother. A court would look at the situation, take into account the incredible stress involved and she would probably walk away with a suspended sentence.

  So if she didn’t do it and it wasn’t an accident then it had to mean that Jonathan Ramsey had something to hide, something that could harm not just himself but his killer as well. Bannister had stated from the off that Ramsey was legit, never been in trouble with the law, squeaky clean, Lasser grunted, no such thing.

  He began to drag the faces forward one at time, Sinclair the slimeball solicitor more than likely having sex his stepdaughter. Rachael, the teenage temptress, and Fulcom the dubious deputy head with the dark room in the attic. He thought of Marshall Brooks the voyeur, hiding in the undergrowth as he added to his pitiful collection. Lasser tried to imagine any kind of scenario that would link someone like Brooks who lived in a disgusting pit of a house with a bucket full of excrement in the bathroom to a clean freak like Fulcom, who lived the minimalist lifestyle you only ever read about in glossy magazines. A man who had left a grubby shit hole of a school to take up a highly sort after position at an exclusive all-girls school. Medea Sullivan had suggested that Fulcom might have had no say in the matter of Rachael Sinclair; maybe the deputy had been too afraid to voice his concerns. Lasser felt his head fall forward onto his chest. A six-year waiting list and Rachael had leapt right to the front of the queue. Which meant she’d either blackmailed Fulcom, threatening to spill the beans about his love of sex with fifteen-year-old girls, or..?

  ‘Sergeant.’

  Lasser felt the thoughts fragment, scuttling back to the dark recesses of his mind, he tried to grasp them, tried to keep hold of something that suddenly felt important.

  ‘Wakey-wakey’

  His eyes flickered open, the pathologist stood in front of him, his hands thrust into his lab coat pockets, a wry smile on his bearded face.

  Lasser yawned and rubbed at his eyes. ‘Sorry, I must have nodded off.’

  ‘This light doesn’t help, starts flickering at the same time every night.’

  Lasser blinked at the man, he was almost as wide as he was tall the beard ginger and unruly, as if made from a mixture of pubic hair and wire wool. ‘Where’s Molder?’

  ‘He’s busy with another unfortunate.’

  Christ, he’d forgotten about Ramsey, he needed his bed, he needed to sleep and it didn’t look like he would be getting either for the foreseeable future.

  ‘What can I do for you, Doc?’

  ‘The girl they pulled from the water, I’ve done the preliminary examination, and I thought you might want the results?’

  Pushing himself up from the moulded plastic chair, he yawned. ‘As long as you don’t intend using any heavy machinery, I don’t think my head could stand it.’

  57

  Bannister watched from the doorway as Suzanne lay curled on the bed, her legs drawn up, hands clasped beneath her chin as if in prayer. He tried to imagine if any of this would have happened if they had stayed together. What sort of life would they have had, could he have provided a house like this, a lifestyle that had left her and his daughter wanting for nothing?

  It was pathetic, shambling through the what ifs and maybes. He’d left and she’d made a life for herself, what right did he have to judge. Taking a hesitant step into the room, a floorboard creaked and her eyes sprang open and pinned him to the spot.

  Bannister swallowed. ‘How do you feel?’

  She rolled onto her back her eyes still locked on his. ‘What’s happening with Jonathan?’ she asked.

  He moved a tentative step closer. ‘He’s been taken away, we should know within a few hours how he died.’

  ‘What about Kelly, are you any nearer to finding her?’ her voice sounded lifeless, the words falling from her cracked lips like a dirge.

  ‘Listen to me, Suzanne; we’re doing all we can...’

  ‘Do you have any suspects, any idea who could have taken my daughter?’

  Bannister looked at the floor, the way she said ‘my daughter’ told him he was excluded from her grief, a bystander and nothing more. He tried to think of something to say, anything that could offer a crumb of comfort, in the end, he drew a blank. ‘No we don’t...’

  ‘Why do you keep saying, we?’

  Another step and he saw her tense.

  ‘I can’t do this on my own,’ it was an admission that splintered inside him, he couldn’t move, couldn’t think anymore. He staggered forward and collapsed to his knees at the side of the bed.

  ‘So you have to rely on idiots like Lasser, is that what you’re telling me, men like him who don’t have a clue?’

  He placed his hands on the bed, his fingers dragging at the sheet, head hanging between outstretched arms. ‘I...’

  ‘You know when I told you about Jonathan and the young women he was fucking?’

  Bannister lifted his head shocked by her choice of words. ‘What?’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t the only one. I lied when I said I used to go to the gym to keep myself fit hoping that he’d notice me. I did it for me, so other men would find me desirable. I hadn’t had sex with Jonathan for over two years, I was the one who had no interest. Oh, he used to try, but I hated his desperate fumbling, the way he would paw at me like a teenager.’

  ‘But, I thought you said...’

  ‘Never mind what I said,’ she snapped. ’Jonathan was more than useless in bed, that’s why he went for the younger option, because they were inexperienced and he was good looking, in an obvious kind of way, and of course rolling in money. They either didn’t care that he was a terrible lover, because he would buy them an expensive watch, or a pair of earrings or if they were a really good fuck he might treat them to a weekend away. Or perhaps they were so immature they thought he was the real thing, the experienced man,’ She snorted in derision.

  Bannister could feel his face lock in shock, his jaw clenched, his eyes like glass. ‘So how many men are we talking about?’

  She pushed herself up against the headboard,
her eyes alive with brittle anger. ‘What business is that of yours, who are you to sit there and judge me...?’

  ‘I’m not judging...’

  ‘You gave up all rights to this,’ her hands snatched at her shirt, the buttons went flying, her breasts swung free, ‘When you left me!’

  Bannister felt the shame slam into him, the weight of the years dropping through his mind like rocks cast down a deep, dark well and he knew then with utter certainty that if he had stayed, if he had made the effort, then their daughter would still be alive. When he looked into her eyes, he saw she knew the truth of it, the hatred she threw out at him was overpowering.

  ‘I loved you, in fact, I never stopped. Jonathan knew it and he said he could accept that as long as we were together. That’s real love, the need to be with someone so much that you can’t imagine life without that person. He felt all those things and I threw it back in his face, the more he wanted and needed me the more I hated him,’ she suddenly snatched the shirt tight around her. ‘The first one was a delivery man. We were having a new computer delivered, Jonathan was at work so I waited in, and he screwed me on the kitchen table.’

  Bannister’s head dropped, it felt as if they were a married couple, he could feel the hurt set up home around his heart, another sliver of pain to add to the collection.

  ‘It was over in a matter of minutes, but you know something, he reminded me of you.’

  Bannister snapped his head up, Suzanne watched him with a sad expression.

  ‘That’s why I did it – there was something about his eyes, the same colour as yours. I made the first move. I could tell what he was thinking, another bored rich-bitch on heat too much time on her hands and gagging for it.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  She looked at him curiously. ‘He kept saying, ‘have it bitch.’

  Bannister leapt to his feet, shadows swirled around the room he felt sick with jealousy. It had been over sixteen years since he walked away, and yet he felt like a cuckolded husband.

  ‘Then there was Simon Ledson, a colleague of Jonathan’s. Oh, he wasn’t really interested in me, he just loved the thought of shagging the wife of someone he worked with.’