'Til Death (DI Steven Marr Book 1) - UK Crime Fiction Whodunnit Thriller

by SP Edwards

  Thomas sent a text back anyway, interested to know more.

  What was me?

  It took less than thirty seconds for the reply to come

  U killed Anna Markham.

  This was stupid.

  I don’t know what you’re talking about, Thomas shot back.

  Again, a swift reply.

  U killed Anna. I no it.

  Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  Another Buzz.

  You killed Anna. It was u.

  Thomas sighed. He thought carefully about what to text next. In the end, the mystery texter beat him to it.

  Meet me. Hendon House, tomorrow, 3pm. No police.

  Thomas breathed out. He wasn’t stupid; there was a good chance this was the mighty boyfriend, coming in to play the hero and placate his own ego at the same time.

  It took Thomas ten minutes or so to consider whether or not to go. He looked out across the countryside. He felt good about things. What’s more, he was pretty sure that even if this was the cop, this would be entrapment.

  Anyway, Caroline had already confessed.

  OK, he text back, no police for you either.

  Thomas thought carefully for the moment, then smiled to himself.

  It was ending.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  It took Alex two hours of being on hold and four cups of coffee to get through to the right department, but they were able to clarify that a parcel had been sent to Gregor Stanic from a John Martyn, the day before the knife had been found in Gregor Stanic’s bin.

  ‘John Martyn?’ Alex said, his disgusted tone probably not making the worker on the other end feel more helpful.

  ‘Thomas must have been a fan.’

  ‘Wouldn’t Stanic have thought something was up?’

  ‘No; he was a die-hard rap fan. Jay-Z, Kanye and all that.’

  ‘And all that?’

  Alex shrugged.

  ‘I’m hip.’ he said, putting the phone down.

  ‘Their security is done by an independent firm who keep records of a month old. If we check the CCTV, we should be able to find out who Mr John Martyn really was. And I’m guessing it’ll have nothing to do with folk-jazz.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Andertons Security operated out of an industrial fixture between Colchester and Brightlingsea. Fortunately, they were a twenty-four seven operation, so Marr, Becky and Alex were able to gain access.

  They were welcomed by a Mark Anderton, the owner of the firm, who showed them through to the closed footage room. There were thousands upon thousands of hard discs piled up, in boxes, on shelves and on the floor.

  ‘We have CCTV here from every post office in Essex from the last twenty-eight days. Now, I’m hoping and praying that at the very least, you’ve got a date for me. Otherwise, I’m afraid you’re in for a long night.’

  Alex held up a piece of paper, on which he’d written the details as given to him by the woman at Royal Mail. There was a date, a time and a name.

  Mark smiled.

  ‘Thank fuck for that.’

  It took him about ten minutes to find the right hard drive. He plugged it into the nearby laptop and began to whisk through the hundreds of folders contained on it.

  ‘Here we go; Greenstead, between one and two PM.’

  He put the footage on fast forward, and they waited. People paid for their parcels and their letters. They filled in forms. They argued with the staff and stormed off. They told jokes and walked off laughing.

  And then, eventually, a face came onto the screen that they recognised.

  Thomas Coulthard. Holding a small brown parcel, and with a shit-eating smile plastered across his face.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  They left the factory feeling happy with their day’s work. Becky drove off to speak to Brooke about bringing Thomas Coulthard in. Marr, meanwhile, decided he was just going to go and grab the bastard himself.

  He was about to get into his own car when he felt the buzz of his phone. It was Alex.

  ‘Sir, Thomas Coulthard.’

  ‘My favourite topic of the day. What about him?’

  ‘He’s at Hendon House. Brian, the barman just phoned it in. Saw him pull up in a rental car.’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘That’s not the worst of it. Someone else turned up ten minutes before him.’

  Marr nearly dropped the phone.

  ‘Who?’ he asked.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Thomas felt some trepidation as he ascended the stairs. There were people around; too many people. He wasn’t exactly planning for a shoot up, but this was more witnesses than he would have liked.

  A fucking wedding fair, though. Whoever the texter was, they had a sick sense of humour. Thomas almost respected them.

  Would-be brides and their tag-alongs flitted about looking at dresses, cakes, tablecloths, and avoiding talking to seedy-looking guys promoting stag dos. There was something about the whole thing that made Thomas feel disgusted. He’d gone to one of them with Anna when Caroline hadn’t been available.

  ‘A bit of support,’ she’d said, ‘I don’t want to turn up looking a singleton.’

  And so he’d gone, gone and been bored silly by the sheer flocks of screaming girls. Some, it had to be said, looked happy to be there. They were the ones that weren’t running around making as much noise as possible.

  Look at me. Someone just look at me.

  Hendon didn’t look quite as bad, but that was to be expected. You weren’t going to get many low-income brides around here. No, these brides here had decorum; they’d been trained to be respectable, whether they realised it or not. They’d been trained to care what other people thought, not that it mattered much.

  Death came for every man, Thomas thought, as he ascended the last few stairs.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  Marr ran towards the main house. He didn’t quite know why, but he found himself heading to where Anna and Stanic would have stayed: the Honeymoon Suite.

  He jogged up the spiral staircase, trying to stop himself barging into the many people dotted around, ogling displays. He caught the eye of a sales rep, who held out a brochure. Marr shook his head, holding up his wedding ring. She smiled.

  ‘Congratulations’.

  Marr took the two corridors to the left and approached the door. He held his ear as close to it as he could. Thomas Coulthard was laughing; a huge, comedic, belly laugh. Marr didn’t like just how manic it sounded, so he decided to go hell for leather, barging the door open.

  Thomas was stood facing one of the main windows, which was wide open. At the sound of the door opening, he turned his head around. His smile fell.

  ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, sounding irritated. ‘How the hell did you know to come here?’

  He was holding a gun up towards the window.

  Between him and the afternoon sky stood Michelle Markham.

  She looked at Marr.

  ‘Hello, inspector.’

  Marr met her eye for a second, then drew his gaze back to Thomas.

  ‘Thomas, put the gun down.’

  Thomas chuckled.

  ‘Why the hell would I do that?’

  ‘Because Michelle hasn’t done anything.’

  Thomas laughed.

  ‘Well, that’s not exactly true, is it? She might not have done anything to me, but then that’s not quite the same thing. I was lucky I decided to come armed: who knows what she’d do to me.’

  Marr looked back to Michelle; her eyes were bright.

  ‘We were just talking’ continued Thomas. ‘I mean sure, Michelle needed a bit of persuasion to get going, but she was happy to spill the beans after a while. It’s a load off, you know? Being able to talk about things. Not everyone knows what it’s like to kill someone: I mean, you certainly don’t, do you?’

  ‘Thomas, pass me the gun.’

  Thomas looked back, and took another step towards Michelle, who almost involuntarily took a step
back in response, making contact with the wall and jumping as she did so.

  Thomas laughed.

  ‘It’s funny, you know. I bet money that Michelle here still doesn’t think we’re the same. To her, I’m probably some sick freak, and she’s just a woman who made a mistake.’

  Michelle looked down to the floor.

  ‘Michelle,’ Marr began, ‘Try and stay calm.’

  Thomas laughed again.

  ‘Calm? But you’re talking to an unquenchable fire! Didn’t you ever wonder just where Anna got that anger from, that sense of justice? It certainly wasn’t from her coward of a father. No, Anna was her mother’s daughter through and through. I tell you what, if I was twenty years older…’

  ‘Fuck you!’ Michelle spat at him, but Thomas only chuckled again.

  ‘I would, Michelle, believe me. You know, you’re still a beautiful woman. It’s amazing you’ve stuck with John all this time. You won’t be short of admirers in prison. You’ll probably be passed around as currency. Hey, we could double date.’

  He laughed again, the noise higher than it had been before. Thomas was losing control.

  ‘Thomas, what happened on the night Anna died,’ Marr asked. ‘You knew about the affair: was it Caroline who told you?’

  Thomas nodded.

  ‘Yes, she came to me after she’d tried getting John to do her dirty work. I guess she figured that she could bat her eyelids and I’d go running. Which, I suppose, is sort of what happened, even if it wasn’t in quite the way she planned.’

  ‘You killed Anna.’

  Thomas looked at Michelle, waiting for her to return his gaze before replying.

  ‘Yes. I killed Anna.’

  Michelle let out a choked sob. Marr knew the sound well enough; it was a form of closure. Marr guessed that Thomas hadn’t confirmed it before he’d arrived. Michelle might have thought that Thomas was the killer, but even being sure of it herself that wasn’t the same as having Thomas confirm it.

  Not that it was much consolation.

  ‘Why?’ she asked. For once, Thomas looked thoughtful.

  ‘I don’t know, not really. I could say I never meant for it to happen, but then I was carrying a knife, wasn’t I? I was so happy, though. I had that stupid caveman: I had him bang to right. I mean, shagging Anna’s best friend? If that wouldn’t split them up what would?’

  ‘How did she react?’

  Thomas’ faced creased up: he looked disgusted.

  ‘She laughed about it. She just gave this giggle, as if it was something she’d always half expected. As if to say, ‘Oh, that Greg’. I mean, he’d betrayed her, and all she did was laugh it off? A man like me would be crucified for doing that. And yet, someone like Greg just gets away with it.’

  ‘You were jealous.’ Marr said, almost to himself.

  Thomas laughed.

  ‘This wasn’t even about Anna, in the end. This was about me and him; this was about everything he was just given. The looks, the job, the girl. I was given nothing; nothing. Why is that? Why does a man like that get a girl like Anna? She was the most beautiful…’

  ‘You killed her, Thomas. You do understand that, don’t you? You killed her.’

  ‘I gutted her.’ Thomas snarled. ‘I remember it. She looked down; as if she couldn’t believe I’d done it. She under-estimated me. People always, always under-estimate me. But no, I couldn’t allow it. I couldn’t allow her to let him off. He deserved to suffer, and I made.’

  Then he smiled.

  ‘He came to see me, you know? Before he ran away; he thought he could come and scare me into confessing. But I sent him running. He thought he was better than me, but he had to run away. He burst into tears on my front porch!’

  Marr said nothing, not wishing to break Thomas’s stream of thought.

  ‘Beneath all that manliness, beneath all that cockiness, they’re all just the same. They’re so weak underneath it all. A man who’s fought in gunfights in the desert scared because he couldn’t outwit me. It bruised his ego, you see? He couldn’t fight me: how would that look when a murder weapon had just turned up in his trash? I beat him; I took everything from him. His career, his wife-to-be, his dignity, even his own impression of himself. I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I didn’t tell you that it felt amazing. Just like his dead bride; under-estimating me and paying the price.’

  ‘I didn’t under-estimate you, Thomas.’ Marr said.

  ‘No, I suppose you didn’t. And neither, I suppose, did you’ he said, turning to Michelle, who remained still. The tears in her eyes had faded.

  ‘I should have killed you’ she said, and Marr knew she meant it.

  And he knew what she meant by emphasising the ‘you’.

  ‘Caroline…how did you do it?’ he asked.

  Michelle looked down at the ground again.

  ‘I…well, I made her do it. I rang her and told her I just wanted to talk, to try and find out more. I told her that I didn’t trust the police. To be honest, I don’t think she did either.’

  ‘John’s got a hunting pistol locked in the cellar. I took it with me, I used it to threaten her. I made her get in the bath, because I’d read that was…was how some people did it. Because it hurt less doing it that way. I wanted, well I wanted her to suffer, but I wanted it to look real.’

  ‘And she did it?’

  Michelle nodded.

  ‘Eventually. She did it right, too; down the line of the wrists. It only took her five minutes to die. She was crying…I, well, I was too.’

  And then, Michelle’s eyes welled up. Marr stood jaw almost open.

  ‘Why?’ he asked.

  Michelle was still sobbing.

  ‘I thought…I thought she’d done it. I thought she’d killed Anna.’

  ‘Christ, why did you think that?’

  ‘The…the phonecalls. The calls she made to John; I was listening in on the other line. She sounded desperate. She sounded like she’d do anything to keep him.’

  ‘But what about Greg, or even Thomas?’

  ‘Greg wouldn’t. I was telling the truth about him. He loved Anna. And Thomas, well…’

  Thomas interrupted her with another barking laugh.

  ‘You see, Marr? People just can’t help but look past a man like me. It’s easily done: I’m nobody. But look what happens to people like Anna, and poor completely innocent people like Caroline. I mean, sure she was shagging her friend’s boyfriend, but God did she ever not deserve to die like that. I mean, cutting her own wrists? That’s a nasty way to go. But then, no loss. She was a troubled girl, wasn’t she? She probably figured she deserved it or something.’

  Tears were running down Michelle’s face. Marr could think of nothing he could say. He could only think of Anna, bleeding to death on a beach, and Caroline, fighting back tears as the metal bit into her wrists.

  Both women scared, alone and dying. And unable to understand why.

  ‘Penny for them, inspector?’ Thomas said, ‘I never had you down as the sensitive type. Perhaps I’m guilty of under-estimating you, too? But, we all make mistakes.’

  He turned the gun towards Marr, who instinctively held his hands up to protect himself. When the shot came, though, Marr felt nothing. He heard a grunting, and saw that Michelle had launched herself at Thomas, and was holding his arm upward. Dust was raining down from the hole in the ceiling.

  Large as Thomas was, he wasn’t that strong, and Michelle was fit. Marr ran forwards to help, bringing his knee hard up into Thomas’s groin. Thomas gasped, but somehow managed to bring his head down sharply into Marr’s face. There was a sharp crack, and Marr’s vision went blurry. He fell to his knees, feeling like he was going to throw up. He tried to will himself back up, but it felt too painful to do anything.

  ‘Inspector!’ Thomas was saying, and his tone was mocking.

  Marr could think of nothing, he could barely see. There was a vague silhouette against the open window, it was coming back into focus, but slowly. Too slowly…

&n
bsp; ‘Christ, that was a lucky shot, wasn’t it? I’m no fighter. But just shows you what can happen when fate’s on your side, doesn’t it? I guess I’m just lucky, unlike Michelle here.’

  The picture was beginning to swim back into view. Thomas had Michelle bent over the open window, the top half of her body was hanging out over the ledge. She was screaming, and Marr could hear her screams mirrored from the ground below. The brides and grooms, all having their lovely afternoon interrupted.

  Thomas looked over Michelle to the courtyard below, and laughed.

  ‘Christ, your police friends aren’t even here yet. You didn’t call for bloody backup, did you?’

  Marr shook his head.

  ‘One more under-estimation. Wouldn’t worry, you’re in good company. You’ll probably regret the results, though. I suppose I’d be foolish for sticking around if your police friends haven’t arrived yet.’

  ‘Thomas, we’ve blocked the main roads out.’

  Thomas just smiled: the smile of a man who’d already won.

  ‘You’re bluffing. Not that it matters much, I’ll be taking the side roads. There’s a path across the fields to the left of the property. Links up with the A12. I’ll be in London within an hour. Needless to say, I didn’t drive my own car here.’

  ‘Christ Thomas, listen to yourself, you’re not a fucking master criminal. So you killed one person…’

  ‘Two people’ Thomas interrupted, and lifted Michelle up and out of the window. There was a silence for a moment. Then, there was a crack and a single, piercing scream.

  Thomas looked detached from the situation. He leant out of the window again to view his handiwork.

  ‘You know,’ he said ‘I’d always read that it became easier after the first time. They were right; that felt fine. I vomited after killing Anna. I had to run for a different field: the last thing I wanted was to leave any evidence.’

  Marr closed his eyes, feeling about ready to give up. Thomas laughed again.