Dark Game

by Rachel Lynch

  ‘Jenny.’

  ‘Yes, Jenny.’

  Dennis’s expression didn’t change. He looked odd with his cycling helmet perched on his massive head.

  ‘Dennis, I’m a policeman.’ Kelly had told him to go slow and not overload the man.

  Dennis looked away.

  ‘I’d like to talk about your brother-in-law, Ian.’

  Now Dennis looked at him and his brow knitted.

  ‘Ian,’ he said blandly.

  ‘Yes, Dennis. Ian. He was accused of killing your niece, Lottie, wasn’t he?’

  Dennis sucked in air. ‘Yes, he was. It wasn’t true, though.’

  ‘I know, and that’s why I need your help.’

  Dennis sat down on the concrete and took a Mars bar from his pocket. He unwrapped it and chewed. Craig turned over a crate and sat on that. His mobile buzzed but he ignored it.

  ‘I saw Wade Maddox, and he told me that his friend Darren liked Lottie’s pretty red dress too,’ he said.

  Dennis stopped chewing. ‘Darren?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wade’s friend Darren?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He played Xbox with me. He always beat me, though, he never liked me to win.’ Dennis smiled cheekily.

  ‘That’s a shame. That you never won. What was Darren like?’

  ‘Bad.’

  ‘Bad?’

  Dennis nodded.

  ‘You know, Dennis, we’re trying to find out who took Lottie so your sister can be at peace. It’s all we care about.’

  Dennis started to chew again, but his face crumpled and he began to weep. Melted chocolate dribbled from his mouth.

  ‘Bad. Bad,’ he said, rocking gently back and forth now.

  ‘Who’s bad, Dennis?’

  ‘I’m bad.’

  ‘Why? Have you done something wrong?’

  ‘He just wanted to play with her, and she beat him at Xbox to teach him a lesson so he’d stop being mean to me.’

  ‘Who wanted to play with Lottie?’

  ‘Darren.’

  ‘Where was this, Dennis?’

  ‘At Wade’s house.’

  ‘You took Lottie to Wade’s house?’

  ‘Only once! Jenny let me take her to the park and it wasn’t far to Wade’s house. She came with me and we played, but I got into trouble because Lottie told Jenny she played Xbox.’

  ‘Did she tell Jenny where?’

  ‘No. Lottie was my friend, she stuck up for me. She never told.’

  ‘Smart kid.’

  ‘Smart, not like me.’

  Craig felt terribly sad as a series of events formed in his head.

  ‘Did Darren know Lottie was going eagle-spotting, Dennis?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I wanted to go really badly. I had to work. I told them I didn’t want to work because I wanted to go with Lottie. Darren said I was a pansy.’

  ‘Why don’t you see Wade any more, Dennis?’

  ‘He was rude. He called me names and told me never to call round again.’

  ‘And when was this?’

  ‘When Lottie didn’t come home.’

  ‘Thank you, Dennis. I think you should go inside and take your hat off now,’ Craig said quietly.

  Dennis got up and went towards the back door. The interview was over. Craig drove to Barrow Island, his fists clenched around the steering wheel. This time, he didn’t knock. The lads were sitting in the same seats they’d been in last time.

  ‘Fellas,’ he said, ‘you should keep your door locked, or the big bad wolf might come and get you.’

  They all froze.

  Craig strode over to Wade, who braced himself.

  ‘Don’t worry, lad, you’re not worth it. The rest of you, fuck off. Now!’

  They were gone in under ten seconds.

  ‘So, Wade. Darren Beckett met Lottie Davis, and she kicked his arse at Xbox.’

  Wade’s eyes widened in terror.

  ‘You little piece of shit! You’ve known this all along and that family have been going through a hell that you’ll never understand. The dad killed himself, for God’s sake!’

  Wade had backed away, and now he crushed himself up against a wall, desperate for an escape route.

  ‘I didn’t know!’ he squealed.

  ‘You’re a liar!’ Craig’s eyes were glittering and he used his huge frame to intimidate young man. It was out of character for him, and he had to strain with every fibre to hold himself back. He should beat the living daylights out of this piece of shit. But sanity won through. There was no point throwing his career away for scum. He hadn’t felt anger like it since he’d found out about his wife and his best friend.

  He turned away.

  ‘This is your last chance, Wade. Tell me what you know or, by God, I’ll frame you so you make Compton look like a saint.’ Goggs Compton, a Barrow boy, had gone down for twenty years for fucking up a burglary and killing an old woman three years ago.

  Wade began to tremble.

  ‘He said he knew how to get the kid back for humiliating him, making him look like an idiot. Dennis went on and on about them going eagle-watching and Darren asked him loads of questions, but I didn’t think about it at the time. I didn’t think he’d do anything to her. It’s disgusting, I never knew he was into that shit.’

  ‘I don’t think he was,’ said Craig.

  Wade looked confused. ‘What?’

  ‘She was stolen to order, you fuckwit, and whoever it was, Darren led them straight to her.’

  ‘He was with us that day!’

  ‘I didn’t say he was there, but he passed the information to whoever did it.’

  Wade’s mouth opened and closed.

  ‘You need to tell me everyone who Darren ever bragged about knowing. These are mean bastards, probably with a lot of money. Was he in debt to anyone? Did he struggle for cash and then suddenly not?’ Craig had calmed down, but he was left with the dull sadness of realising that a ten-year-old beating a twenty-eight-year-old on Xbox had led to her torture and death.

  ‘Yes! That’s when he started going to the Lakes. He said he worked in posh hotels and there were girls hanging off him,’ Wade said, breathless.

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  ‘No, but I didn’t see him much after that.’

  ‘Liar! Tell me the fucking truth, or help me God…’

  ‘He got me a job driving.’

  ‘Driving what? Miss Daisy?’

  ‘Girls.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Hotels.’

  ‘You drove girls in between hotels?’

  Wade nodded.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I don’t think they were cleaners.’ Wade clearly thought his joke was funny, but Craig disagreed. ‘Darren took a bit of money off them. He said it was his sideline, before the big boys got their share.’

  ‘The big boys?’

  ‘Who he worked for.’

  ‘And who might that be?’

  ‘Some guy called Marko.’

  Craig turned away. He needed to tell Kelly.

  ‘Listen to me. I’m going to write a statement, and you’re going to sign it, understand?’

  Wade nodded again. He hung his head. His mum would kill him. Darren would kill him.

  ‘One more thing. Has Darren ever asked you to get rid of anything for him?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard. He worked for Marko, delivering girls; what else did he do?’

  Craig could almost hear the cogs turning as Wade scrabbled around in his head trying to remember. Suddenly his eyes lit up.

  ‘He loved to play Manhunt.’

  ‘The video game?’ Craig knew it well; he’d taken a copy off his son and slapped him over the head with it.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Go on,’ Craig said.

  ‘He always said it’d be easy to get rid of the dead bodies here in the Lakes. You know, the people he killed on the game.’
/>
  ‘And? Did he have a favourite place?’

  ‘Not exactly, but he said the dock would be good.’

  ‘Barrow Dock?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Have you ever thought about maybe getting some new friends?’

  Wade shrugged.

  ‘Keep your door shut and stay out of trouble, and if I ever hear your name again, I swear I’ll kick your head in, do you understand?’

  Craig left, slamming the door behind him. The cool air was refreshing. He hoped his son never met anyone like Wade Maddox or Darren Beckett. It was a pipe dream, he knew; soon enough he’d be on his own, making life-changing decisions for himself. He hoped he stayed away from lowlifes, but could only pray that if one did walk into his life, he’d have the good sense to know it.

  Chapter 45

  ‘Hello, Darren.’

  Kelly sat down. She looked at Beckett for a moment. He was in a shit state: he stank, and he coughed frequently. The interview room was small and sparse, and his odour pervaded every inch of it.

  ‘Can you confirm your full name and date of birth for the record, please?’

  ‘Darren Paul Beckett. Third of the fourth, eighty-nine.’

  ‘Thank you. Darren, what is your relationship to Anushka Ivanov?’

  ‘She was my girlfriend. I haven’t seen her in ages.’

  ‘When was the last time you did see her?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’ He fidgeted continually as he spoke.

  ‘Is she a prostitute?’

  No answer.

  ‘Does she work for you?’

  No answer.

  ‘Does this ring any bells?’ Kelly placed the ‘flower’ business card in front of him.

  He shook his head.

  ‘Do you work for Marko?’

  The faintest flicker, but still no answer.

  ‘Why were you visiting the Troutbeck Guest House last night?’ Kelly realised that the man wasn’t going to respond to anything she asked, but she ploughed on for the record. ‘Who did you deliver Lottie Davis to five years ago?’

  This time his mouth fell open, but he closed it tightly again. Kelly could tell that he was shocked that she knew so much. After Craig had called, she had walked out of her office, sat on the wall opposite Eden House and cried.

  ‘Was this all about Lottie beating you at Xbox?’

  She noticed that small beads of sweat had formed on Darren’s forehead, and he shifted in his seat.

  ‘Do you recognise these?’ She held up a clear plastic bag through which bloody and soiled clothes could be seen.

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s funny, because we have CCTV footage of you filling your car up at the Arrow station in Ulverston on the night of the twenty-first of September, and you’re wearing an identical jacket. That’s a lot of blood, isn’t it? You know, we have something these days called DNA testing. I’ll know in under an hour whose blood it is. Is it Anushka’s?’

  Darren swallowed. There was a cup of water in front of him and he sipped at it. His hands shook.

  ‘Or Kevin Cottrell’s?’

  Darren looked down.

  ‘Did you rape and strangle Lottie Davis?’

  ‘No!’ Finally, a response, and Kelly reckoned it was the truth. He slammed the cup down.

  ‘You just delivered her?’ she continued. ‘Could you open your mouth, please?’ Darren looked confused but did as he was told. He didn’t think to question it when she scraped DNA from the inside of his mouth and placed it in a tube. He hadn’t been arrested, but his acquiescence would count as permission in court.

  His breathing became laboured and he coughed some more, hacking and spluttering, to Kelly’s disgust. She gave him a few minutes to compose himself.

  ‘Why were the following items in your Barrow Island flat: Anushka Ivanov’s phone, wallet, driving licence and various items of clothes?’ Kelly read from her pad for effect.

  ‘I told you, she was my girlfriend.’

  Kelly paused. ‘Darren, look, Wade has told us everything already. It would be easier for all of us, including you, if you stopped wasting my time and simply told us what you know.’

  He stood up, and the uniform behind him shoved him back down into his seat.

  ‘Who do you think might have tipped us off about two murdered males left in the Kirkstone slate mine? Are they Tony Proctor and Kevin Cottrell? Did they know too much? You were set up, Darren; is there somebody who’d like to see you behind bars?’ Kelly knew that Darren was a mere cog in the wheel. She needed something else.

  DS Umshaw came into the room and handed her a piece of paper. The dentistry department at the lab in Carlisle had gone all out and identified one of the bodies as Kevin Cottrell from his dental records. Plus there was a printout from Anushka’s phone. Kelly quickly scanned it; she knew what she was looking for.

  ‘Well, well, well. It would seem that Anushka called your number on the evening of the twentieth September at exactly eight fifty-seven p.m., two minutes before she left Colin Day for dead in his hotel room after robbing him and being paid for sex. Was she asking you what she should do? Did she panic? She called you a lot, didn’t she? Daily at least. Until the twenty-first, when the calls stop. Where did she go without her phone?’

  Darren wiped his top lip with his sleeve and loosened his collar.

  ‘What happened to the cash, the Rolex and the ruby ring?’

  ‘What? I never took any of those things!’

  Interesting. Anushka was a clever girl; she’d hidden them from him. Possibly in her room, and that was what he’d been after at the guest house. But her room was empty.

  ‘It has now been confirmed that one of the men found at the mine was the manager of the Thwaite Hotel, Kevin Cottrell. What did he know?’

  Silence.

  ‘Didn’t you mind your girlfriend having sex with other men?’

  ‘She wasn’t my…’

  ‘Ah, I thought you said she was,’ said Kelly. She was rattling him. She was almost there.

  ‘This ring any bells?’ She put the photo of Lottie’s dead body in front of him and he stared at it for a long time. He closed his eyes.

  ‘What about this?’ It was a photo of Anna Cork.

  ‘This?’ A photo of the mutilated corpse of Kevin Cottrell.

  ‘Oh God.’ Darren bent over and threw up all over the floor. Kelly got out of the way just in time, but within seconds, the sour aroma of vomit filled the room. She fought back her desperate desire for fresh air. She had to keep going.

  ‘Can I wash my mouth out?’ Darren looked at her with pleading eyes. Sweat dropped off his chin and ran into his straggly beard.

  ‘No.’

  Kelly dragged the table away from the sick and instructed Darren to move his chair.

  ‘Do you know any of these girls, Darren?’ She spread ten photos in front of him taken from the USBs found in Colin Day’s office. She picked them up one at a time and held them up. Darren stared at them all blankly, turning away only once.

  ‘So, you know this one, do you?’ Kelly wrote on the back of it that Darren seemed to recognise it.

  Silence.

  ‘How many hotels are you aware of that double as brothels, Darren?’

  Silence.

  ‘You are aware that a jury would put you away for life for the torture and murder of a minor?’ She stopped the recording. ‘You do know what happens to sex cases in prison, don’t you?’ The uniform behind him smirked. ‘It gets difficult to walk after a while,’ she whispered. ‘On the other hand, drugs – which we also found at your flat – could make you quite popular inside. I know which I’d choose.’

  She resumed the recording.

  ‘How much did you get paid for delivery of Lottie Davis?’

  ‘I didn’t deliver her!’

  She ploughed on.

  ‘Were you the one who leaked the Colin Day story to the Daily Mail? Come on, Darren, if you don’t give me something, you’ll be hung out to dry. Are you really prepared to
take the rap for everything? It all started to unravel with Colin Day’s death, didn’t it?’

  ‘He should’ve kept his dick in his pants!’ Darren blurted.

  ‘Quite an outburst, Darren. His death must have been an inconvenience to you.’

  ‘Not to me.’

  ‘To your boss?’

  Kelly stared at him. His eyes were dead, but she could tell that he was thinking. He was scared. He looked as though he was suffering withdrawal tremors too.

  ‘What were you doing at Barrow Dock on the evening of September the twenty-first? Bit late for a walk.’

  She continued to hold his gaze, and he looked away.

  ‘Wade said you told him it would be a great place to hide bodies.’

  Darren leant over and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘I’ve got divers going into Barrow Dock,’ Kelly lied. ‘I wonder what they might find.’

  ‘He’s called Marko.’ Darren’s voice was almost inaudible.

  Kelly sat up straight. ‘Marko who?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ She was getting straight answers to straight questions now.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘He’s got places all over.’

  ‘I have plenty of time.’

  Darren recited details of a number of addresses. He sounded exhausted, and Kelly made one final push.

  ‘What exactly is Marko’s role, Darren?’

  ‘He’s in charge.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘He gets girls.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘All over. None of them are British.’

  ‘Except Lottie Davis.’

  ‘Look, I told Marko’s son about her when I was angry, but I swear I had no part in it.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘He’s called Sasha.’

  ‘Did you tell him about the eagle-watching trip?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Associates.’

  ‘A guy called Curtis and his three brothers.’

  ‘How big an operation is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s into dog fighting, street fighting and high-class sex parties. He uses a big house in Ullswater.’

  ‘This one?’ Kelly showed him the photo of the mansion booked through Elite Escapes.

  ‘It could be.’ Darren studied it. ‘The driveway looks familiar. I only ever saw it in the dark.’

  ‘What really happened to Nush?’ Kelly asked.

  Darren’s expression was sly. ‘Sasha killed her and gave me her stuff.’