TWISTED CRIMES
A gripping detective mystery full of suspense
DCI SOPHIE ALLEN BOOK 5
MICHAEL HAMBLING
First published 2017
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this.
The right of Michael Hambling to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
©Michael Hambling
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THERE IS A GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH VOCABULARY IN THE BACK OF THIS BOOK FOR US READERS.
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A young woman’s body is discovered on a deserted footpath in a Dorset seaside town late on a cold November night. She has been stabbed through the heart.
It seems like a simple crime for DCI Sophie Allen and her team to solve. But not when the victim’s mother is found strangled the next morning. The case grows more complex as DCI Sophie Allen discovers that the victims had secret histories, involving violence and intimidation. There’s an obvious suspect but Detective Allen isn't convinced. Could someone else be lurking in the shadows, someone savagely violent, looking for a warped revenge?
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Dorset County Council and Bournemouth District Council operate with absolute probity and I wish to make it clear that the corrupt councillor thread of this novel is entirely a product of my imagination. In fact I admire councillors for the work they do, often in very difficult circumstances and with little thanks for their efforts.
CONTENTS
Prologue
CHAPTER 1: Missing
CHAPTER 2: Bad Moon Rising
CHAPTER 3: Crushed
CHAPTER 4: Uppers and Downers
CHAPTER 5: Morden Bog
CHAPTER 6: A Grim Task
CHAPTER 7: Scar
CHAPTER 8: Fidelio
CHAPTER 9: Tickled Toes
CHAPTER 10: Going Doolally
CHAPTER 11: Ripples on the Pond
CHAPTER 12: Mind Probe
CHAPTER 13: Smarties
CHAPTER 14: Paranoid
CHAPTER 15: A Blessing in Disguise
CHAPTER 16: Sleepover
CHAPTER 17: Follow the Money
CHAPTER 18: Family Questions
CHAPTER 19: Dense and Substantial
CHAPTER 20: Double Checking
CHAPTER 21: The Body in the Woods
CHAPTER 22: Mole Hunt
CHAPTER 23: Barbecue
CHAPTER 24: Sanitised
CHAPTER 25: Cool Smile
CHAPTER 26: Willy-Waggling
CHAPTER 27: Proposal
CHAPTER 28: Dark Horse
CHAPTER 29: Snubbed
CHAPTER 30: Taking the Bait
CHAPTER 31: Skate Park
CHAPTER 32: Death at the Waterside
CHAPTER 33: Poaching Plans
CHAPTER 34: Business Proposals
CHAPTER 35: Stitched Up
CHAPTER 36: Foot in the Door
CHAPTER 37: Balaclava and Baseball Bats
CHAPTER 38: Dirty Harry
CHAPTER 39: Greenhouse Fruit
CHAPTER 40: Catsuit
THE SOPHIE ALLEN BOOKS
Glossary of English terms for US readers
CHARACTER LIST
Dedication
To Margaret and our three sons, Stephen, Malcolm and David. I’d also like to acknowledge the support of my two daughters-in-law, Kate and Katherine.
Prologue
It was a fine, mild afternoon in late April and the spring flowers were putting on a display worthy of midsummer. Poole Crematorium is a lovely place, its flower beds and swathes of grass set off beautifully against the backdrop of pine trees. The scent of evergreens hung in the air, perfectly complementing the faint sound of humming insects. Sylvia and Edward Armitage waited patiently outside the crematorium building, having arrived rather too early for the funeral of Georgie Palmer, an ex-badminton club colleague of Sylvia’s. The roads had been surprisingly quiet on the drive down from Blandford Forum, hence their early arrival. They studied the afternoon schedule, pinned to the wall of the entrance, noting that there was an hour’s gap between the previous service and the one they planned to attend. They’d already walked around the flower beds and the shrubbery. Now, with only fifteen minutes to go, they were back at the entrance waiting for someone else to arrive. Anyone else, to be honest. The problem was, they knew none of Georgie’s family or friends. Sylvia would be the sole representative of the Blandford Belles Badminton Group and she’d never met any acquaintance of Georgie’s other than fellow club members and few of those now remembered the retired librarian who had left the group a decade earlier when she’d moved to Poole. Sylvia had only visited Georgie two or three times during that decade, and it had come as a complete shock to hear of her death from an unexpected heart attack.
The elderly duo looked up as a small funeral cortege appeared, slowly making its way towards them. The hearse drew level with the doors, the three shiny black limousines following it stopped and disgorged their mourners onto the tarmac area and suddenly Edward and Sylvia found themselves surrounded by a cluster of about two dozen people moving towards the entrance. They followed the group inside. The coffin, an ornate box almost hidden under a mass of brightly coloured flowers, was brought in, held up on the shoulders of six dark-clad men who deposited it on the bier, bowed and moved to a row of empty seats in the second row. It was only when they sat down, in a row behind most of the other mourners that the two pensioners began to feel uneasy. Sylvia realised that only four members of the congregation were women, and they didn’t look like the kind of family or friends that she’d ever imagined the retired librarian to have. They were all dressed in black, true enough, but they looked more like models, with stiletto-heeled shoes, tailored dresses and expensive-looking leather jackets. The men made her feel even more uneasy, they spoke in growling voices and seemed tense. The three sitting immediately in front of her and Edward appeared to be arguing in semi-whispered tones. She turned to her husband.
‘Are we in the right place, Ted?’ she whispered. ‘These don’t look anything like the people I’d expect at Georgie’s funeral.’
Ted looked at his watch. ‘It’s still only ten to three, and the list said her funeral was at three. I wonder what’s going on?’
They watched with some bemusement as a stocky man from the front row stood up and took the few steps to the front. ‘So. We’re here for the committal. Five minutes and it’ll all be over.’ He turned to face the coffin. ‘Dad, we’re gonna miss you, you old letch.’ He turned back to face the small congregation and spotted the Armitage couple. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he demanded.
Every head in the congregation swivelled around to look at the elderly pair. T
he three men in front of them seemed particularly menacing. Sylvia couldn’t help but notice the fine scar that ran from eye to chin on the face of the middle one.
Edward stuttered an apology. ‘So sorry. We seem to have come to the wrong service.’ He took Sylvia’s hand and quietly led her out of the chapel, back into the bright sunshine outside.
‘I’m feeling quite queasy, Ted. Who were those people?’ Sylvia’s voice was quivering.
Her husband shook his head. ‘Don’t know. Look, that’s more like our lot.’ He pointed towards a group of elderly people making their way along the drive towards them, several of them using walking sticks. A hearse appeared in the distance, turning in from the road outside.
‘Thank goodness,’ Sylvia said, feeling calmer. ‘Normal people at last.’
They didn’t see the man who’d slipped out of the crematorium building behind them. He was obscured by shrubs but had found a gap through which his telephoto lens pointed at the Armitage couple.
CHAPTER 1: Missing
Monday, Week 1
Sharon Giroux was starting to feel worried. She was standing in the front porch of her parents’ bungalow in Blandford having rung the doorbell three times, and still there was no response. The bell was most certainly working. The sounds of the electronic chimes had carried clearly through the door, but no movement could be seen through the thick, patterned glass. She pressed her nose to the door and tried the bell one last time. Nothing. Sighing, she opened the zip on her shoulder bag and felt down through its assorted contents to the smaller inner compartment, extracting the keys kept inside. Nothing serious could have happened to her parents, surely? Admittedly she hadn’t seen them for two weeks, having returned from holiday with her own family only the previous day. They hadn’t answered her phone call, made immediately after she and Pierre had put their two young children to bed, and that was strange. Her parents rarely went out on a Sunday evening, not with one of their favourite historical dramas being broadcast mid-evening. There had been no time to check on them earlier in the day, not with her own return to work and its incessant pressures. A GP’s working life is one continuous logjam of problems that require immediate action, especially after a fortnight’s absence.
Sharon turned the key in the lock and opened the door. ‘Mum? Dad?’ she called. There was no answer, no sound of movement. The air seemed slightly stale as if no window had been opened for days. Impossible, surely. She’d phoned her younger brother the previous evening after their parents’ lack of response, and he’d said that the elderly couple had been fine earlier that weekend. But then, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Sharon realised with some certainty that her brother had been lying. He hadn’t called in to see them. He probably hadn’t even bothered to phone. Absolutely bloody typical of the lazy, irresponsible toerag. Well they certainly weren’t anywhere inside the small dwelling. It had taken Sharon only a few moments to glance in all of the rooms. They were all neat and tidy, as expected. She peered out of the kitchen window with its view over the garden, her father’s pride and joy. Birds scattered as a neighbour’s cat sashayed down the path from the shrubs at the far end. No sign of her parents though. She turned back to the hallway and then her heart lurched. That pile of post gathered on the mat behind the door wasn’t just from a day or two. It looked more like a week’s accumulation. Most of it was junk mail, as she would have expected, but there was a lot of it.
She pulled her phone out of her bag and called her brother, tucking her long hair behind her ear as she waited for him to answer.
‘Rod? You lying toad. You said you’d called in to see Mum and Dad at the weekend, but you didn’t, did you?’
There was a pause before he answered. ‘Well, I was kind of busy. Things were happening, you know?’
‘I bet you didn’t even phone them. When did you speak to them last? Tell me.’
‘I’m not answerable to you. Why do you still think you can tell me what to do even now, you stuck-up cow? Bossing me about, bossing everyone about, as if you run everything.’
‘Shut up, Rod. They’re not here. It looks as though they haven’t been here for days. So where are they? Can you tell me that?’
There was a short pause. ‘Why worry about it? They’ll be off somewhere, probably enjoying themselves. Maybe getting away from you and your obsession with controlling everything and everybody. Maybe they’re as sick of you as I am.’
‘Oh, bugger off. You’re worse than useless. They’ve left no note, there were no messages from them on our phone at home, nothing. That’s not like them. I’m worried and I need to find out where they are. I’ll have a quick chat with the neighbours. I could say that I could do with your help but you’re so crap at anything you’re asked to do that you’re better off staying away. If I don’t get a satisfactory answer from anyone around here then I’m going to the police. Okay?’ She hung up and took a deep breath to dissipate the intense anger that she felt. She took another, more careful tour of the bungalow before heading towards the neighbouring property. Worry was making her feel slightly nauseous.
* * *
‘And there’s nothing out of place? Nothing obvious missing? It’s just the car that’s gone?’ PC George Warrander was working his way through a mental checklist. The dark-haired, well-dressed woman sitting opposite him in the lounge of her parents’ bungalow shook her head. She looked under strain but was probably wrong to be worried, he thought. It was likely that her parents would turn up safe and sound sometime soon, but meanwhile he needed to err on the side of caution, not only because he was a young, inexperienced copper but also because she was one of the GPs in the practice he used. He knew that she was intelligent, thorough and unlikely to be a fantasist. ‘The house is secure,’ he said. ‘I checked, and there are no signs of any forced entry. And you say that no one in the immediate family knows where they are?’
Sharon shook her head. ‘There’s only me and my brother, Rod. I’ve been away on holiday for two weeks, only getting back yesterday evening. My brother lives locally and he was meant to keep an eye on them but I don’t think he bothered, despite what he said to me. It’s that pile of mail inside the front door. It looks as if it’s a week’s worth, maybe even longer. The thing is, officer, our holiday was in Cornwall and my parents knew that. It would have been easy to contact me. Mum often calls me on my mobile and if there was a problem of some kind she’d have let me know. The same if they made a sudden decision to go away for a few days. She’d have called or sent me a text.’
‘Some elderly people don’t know how to text, or feel reticent about it.’
‘Not Mum. Dad maybe, but Mum often texts me. Look, this is so unlike them. I’m really worried.’
‘What about their passports? Do you know where they’re kept?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. It’s so rare for them to go abroad, you see. They’ll be in a drawer in the bedroom. I’ll go and check.’ Sharon left the room for a few minutes, time that allowed the young constable to marshal his thoughts. When she came back, she looked puzzled. ‘They’re not there. Mum keeps them in a plastic wallet in the top drawer, but it’s missing. I just don’t understand it. She’d have let me know if they were going abroad. And the suitcase set they’d have used is still there, tucked under the bed where it’s always kept.’
‘What was the mobile signal like where you were? Is it possible that she tried to contact you but couldn’t get through?’
‘It was a bit weak at times, but she’d have left a message for me if she couldn’t get through. I know she would.’
‘Depends on the phone company and the contract, as far as I know.’ Warrander came to a decision. ‘Right, Dr Giroux. I can see you’re genuinely concerned, so I’ll report it as missing persons. I’ll also ask for it to be made a high priority. That means someone more senior than me will take over. Do you want to remain here or go back home?’
‘I’ll stay here for a while. My husband is at home and can look after our children. How long is this li
kely to take?’
He removed his uniform cap and ran his fingers through his spiky hair. ‘I can’t be sure, but the quicker we get the ball rolling the better. I’ll have a quick chat with the immediate neighbours then wait with you until the team arrive. Maybe then I’ll call on your brother.’
Sharon grimaced. ‘Good luck to you. I have to tell you that we don’t get on. This is so typical of him, not checking up on them when he’d agreed to. He makes my blood boil. It’s got to the stage where I can hardly stand being in the same room as him.’
Warrander nodded but said nothing. It wasn’t for him to find out more about the obvious fragility of this particular brother-sister relationship. Better to leave that to someone senior or the detectives, if they were called in.
* * *
The young PC quickly understood the source of the antagonism between the two siblings. Whereas Sharon was everything he expected of a professionally qualified woman in a responsible job, her brother was the opposite in almost every way. Untidy, offhand and smelling of drink. His small flat was grubby and appeared to be badly maintained. It smelled of stale food, the aroma probably generated by the stack of empty pizza cartons and curry containers littering the surfaces of the tiny kitchen area. Rod sprawled across a threadbare couch, a cigarette dangling from his lips. He hadn’t offered the police officer tea, coffee or anything else to drink. Not that Warrander would have accepted. He’d already noticed that every cup and mug that he could see was chipped or badly stained or both.
‘She’s too uptight. Paranoid even. Give her half a chance and she’ll get herself worked up about next to nothing. And when it comes to the old couple, she goes off her rocker. They’ll be fine. They’ll have gone off for the weekend and forgotten to tell anyone, old codgers that they are.’
TWISTED CRIMES a gripping detective mystery full of suspense Page 1
