Jack Be Nimble (Knight & Culverhouse Book 3)

by Adam Croft

  Contents

  Copyright Information

  Acknowledgements

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

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  This book is entirely a work of fiction.

  The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  The author’s opinions are not representative of those of the publisher.

  Published by Circlehouse 2015

  Copyright © Adam Croft 2015

  Adam Croft asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  As always, a number of people are responsible for making this book what is. So blame them, not me.

  My special thanks go to:

  PC Matthew Taylor and the rest of the First Response team at Bedfordshire Police for letting me shadow him for the day and see the fantastic job the police do in responding to incidents.

  My wife and mum for being the first people to read my early drafts and fix my most laughable errors before they ever see the light of day.

  My fantastic Advanced Readers Club, who read the book before anyone else and give their feedback on plots, characters and the other laughable errors. They are Gary Alce, Lisa Gall, Cynthia Philo and Laura Smith. In my eyes, they’re all gods.

  Thanks also to everyone else not thanked by name, but who I should be thanking. I appear to have mislaid my list of people to thank, and I’m on a deadline here, dontchaknow. If you were expecting to be thanked on this page and haven’t been, please don’t take it personally — I’ve either lost the list or one of my cats has eaten it.

  I hope you enjoy the book, and I’d very much welcome any feedback you have.

  Adam Croft

  1

  31st August

  It felt odd punching an unconscious woman. Wrong, almost. Almost. The tranquilliser wouldn’t be wearing off for some time yet, so he had plenty of time to revel in the rollercoaster of emotions.

  He steadied himself by leaning forward on the edge of the bathtub, the plastic wrap crunching and rustling as he did so. He had a sudden urge to spit in her face, but knew he had to control himself. Leaving his DNA on the body wouldn’t be a great start.

  It was getting almost unbearably hot inside the beekeeper’s suit but he couldn’t remove anything until it was all over. It just wasn’t worth the risk.

  He pulled the knife out of its leather sheath and turned it in his hand, the light glistening off the steel and bouncing around the room. He pulled it under his nostrils and sniffed. It smelt of nothing — perhaps faintly of leather — but it wasn’t the smell he was interested in. It was the sensation.

  He looked down at her body and noticed a red mark already appearing where he’d punched her. All he needed to do now was wait until a bruise had started to develop. He couldn’t kill her before then, as much as he desperately wanted to. He was fighting the urge with every fibre of his being. He didn’t know whether it was excitement, joy or extreme anxiety. Right now he knew only one thing: he had to stick to the plan.

  Going off track now could be disastrous. Every minuscule aspect of this had to be carried out to a T. For every stage, he’d even worked out a secondary and, in most cases, a tertiary option should unforeseen circumstances arise. Because unforeseen circumstances always arose.

  The only thing he could not be sure of were the exact timings, but that didn’t matter too much. The plan he was working from didn’t have exact timings. He knew that the red mark on her face would build slightly and some swelling would occur. With any luck, he’d have cracked her cheekbone or caused tissue damage which would be spotted anyway. He wasn’t waiting for a full-on purple shiner — that could take days. No, just a nice red welt would do. Enough for them to spot it.

  Cutting through her neck hadn’t felt at all like he had expected it to. It was like slicing a tough, stringy chicken breast. Even with his ultra-sharp knife he had to rock the knife and work with it to get the effect he wanted. Before long he was almost down to the vertebrae. He’d placed a plastic screen over her upper body and was now struggling to see through it, such was the amount of blood that’d hit it. This job needed to be clean, though, because they couldn’t catch him. Not just yet. Not until he was ready.

  He carefully peeled back the plastic glove over his left wrist to look at his watch. It was almost time.

  2

  31st August

  DCI Jack Culverhouse stood ashen-faced at his front door, staring out at the figure in front of him. He wasn’t used to having late-night callers, and he certainly wasn’t expecting this one.

  ‘Hello Jack,’ she said as she tried to force a smile.

  For him, though, no words were forthcoming. The last time he’d seen Helen was eight and a half years ago, the day she’d walked out and taken their three-year-old daughter Emily with her. That day seemed as though it could have been a century ago, but at the same time, seeing her face before him again now, it felt like it was only yesterday.

  Her hair was shorter, cut neatly and shaped around the jawline, with fading highlights which had evidently been put in a few months ago. She’d still kept her slim figure, Jack noticed. At least that was something.

  ‘You probably weren’t expecting to see me,’ she said as she pushed a straight lock of hair behind her ear.

  ‘No. I can’t say I was.’

  ‘Can I come in?’ she asked, tilting her head slightly to one side.

  This wasn’t exactly a situation which had certain protocol or etiquette attached to it. Not that Jack Culverhouse was a man for protocol or etiquette. For eight and a half years he’d imagined this moment, thought about what he’d say if it ever happened. What could he possibly say? After eight and a half years, he still didn’t have an answer to that question.

  Part of him — an ever-decreasing part — was pleased to see her. She was, after all, his wife. The anger and resentment had also subsided over the years. For the first year or two,
he would’ve slammed the door in her face, no questions asked. But now those feelings had waned and he found himself feeling absolutely no emotion for a woman he’d married and fathered a child with.

  His feelings for Emily had certainly not diminished, though. A father’s love never fades.

  All of this flashed through his mind in a split-second before he answered the only way he knew how.

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  The first thought that crossed his mind as he closed the front door was how strange it was that Helen had had to ask to enter what was, essentially, her own house. He’d never got round to removing her name from the deeds. He’d need her permission to do that anyway, and he had no way of getting in contact with her. At least, that was his justification for not doing it.

  Managing the mortgage on his own hadn’t been a problem. He’d been doing that anyway, before she left, but afterwards he’d had the added bonus of not having to clear her credit card bill each month too.

  ‘I suppose you want to know why I’m here,’ she said as she sat down on the sofa and leant forward, her elbows on her knees.

  ‘No, I just thought we could have a cup of tea and play happy fucking families again.’

  Helen smiled. ‘Still got your acerbic wit, I see.’

  ‘Is that what it is?’ Culverhouse replied. ‘Personally, I call it realism.’

  ‘You can sit down, you know.’

  Culverhouse raised his eyebrows. ‘What, in my own house? How very kind of you.’

  Helen’s smile faded. ‘Sit down, Jack.’

  Culverhouse did as he was told.

  ‘I really don’t know where to start,’ she said, staring at her feet. ‘I’ve been planning this for so long, how to explain and get it to make sense for you. It doesn’t really make much sense to me, if I’m honest, but there we go. It’s not really something you can ever explain, is it? I mean, how do you find the right words to say—’

  ‘Where have you been?’ Culverhouse interrupted, more as a statement than a question.

  ‘Spain.’

  ‘Oh, lovely. At least you were sunning yourself and enjoying sangria and siestas, then.’

  ‘It’s not all that,’ she said, looking back at her feet.

  ‘And what about Emily?’ he asked, his voice lowered.

  ‘She’s fine.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’s not here,’ Helen answered.

  ‘Well I can bloody well see that,’ Culverhouse replied, standing and pacing towards the kitchen with his hands thrust in his pockets.

  ‘She didn’t want to come. And before you say it, yes, I did try and get her to. But she didn’t want to. You have to understand, Jack, she barely knows you.’

  ‘Of course she doesn’t! You took her away when she was three years old, Helen. What do you think that does to a kid?’

  Helen remained silent.

  ‘Where is she? Who’s she with?’ he asked.

  Helen sighed. ‘She’s with David.’

  ‘David? Who’s David?’

  ‘He’s my partner.’

  Culverhouse nodded slowly. ‘I see. And does she call him Daddy?’ It sounded ridiculous, but it was the first thing he could think to say.

  ‘No, of course she doesn’t,’ came the reply. In all his years of police training and experience, he could still never tell whether or not his wife was telling the truth. ‘What about you, Jack? Haven’t you moved on? It’s been eight and a half years.’

  Culverhouse let out a small snort before he spoke. ‘I know exactly how long it’s been, Helen. And no, I haven’t. I’m married. To you.’

  ‘Only legally,’ Helen replied in a small voice. ‘Never emotionally. Emotionally, you were always married to the job. I can see some things never change,’ she said, pointing to the Mildenheath CID lanyard hanging around his neck. ‘I mean, am I being interviewed or are we having a chat? It’s gone midnight, for Christ’s sake.’

  Culverhouse looked at the lanyard and took it off, throwing it on top of the lounge sideboard.

  ‘It meant nothing to you back then and it’ll probably mean nothing now, but it’s not a nine to five job, Helen. It’s a way of life. A way of life you bought into.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. But do you have any idea what it was like to have to try and bring up a child, pretty much on my own? Do you think I just wanted to use you for the free roof over my head and the occasional bonk when you’d got home at three in the morning? That’s not a marriage, Jack. We both deserved better than that.’

  ‘So why didn’t we ever talk about it?’ he replied. ‘Why just up and leave? What did that solve?’

  ‘I don’t know. I still don’t know. It just seemed like the right thing to do. I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true.’

  Culverhouse looked at his wife as she sat staring at the carpet and wondered if he’d ever really known her at all.

  3

  31st August

  Even though it was gone midnight, DS Wendy Knight was still wide awake. She’d not really enjoyed a full night’s sleep in a long time. Being a Detective Sergeant attached to the local murder squad wasn’t exactly conducive to a peaceful slumber at the best of times, but recent times had been particularly unkind to Wendy.

  Her first serial killer case had not only led to her having to try and clear the name of her then lover, Robert, but also the stark realisation that the murderer had been closer to home than she’d realised.

  Get back on the horse, her father had always told her. Bill Knight had been a CID officer himself, and those words of his had echoed around Wendy’s mind in the days and weeks following the closure of her first serial killer case.

  Getting back on the horse had been relatively easy. It was falling off again that hurt. First came the discovery that she was pregnant with her dead partner’s baby before suffering a miscarriage after a foot chase with a petty criminal. And all whilst trying to solve a double murder case just weeks after the first.

  Sleep hadn’t been the first thing on Wendy’s mind for a long time. Neither had unpacking her belongings and making her new house a home. The house wasn’t strictly new any more — she’d been here a while — but the plethora of cardboard boxes scattered around had kept the illusion alive for longer than usual.

  She’d tried to justify her lack of diligence in unpacking on some vague notion that she might decorate a couple of the rooms before long. Deep down, she knew that would never happen and had now resolved to finally stop living out of cardboard boxes.

  The kitchen was now almost complete. At least now she’d be able to cook for herself rather than relying on ready meals and takeaways. She’d privately scolded herself for unpacking the microwave before anything else on the day she’d moved in.

  Tearing off the parcel tape from one box marked General nicknacks, she paused as she opened the cardboard flaps and saw, sitting at the top, a framed photograph of her and Michael in happier times. The photo had been taken a year or two after their father had died, but whilst their mother was still alive. As Wendy picked the photo up she felt strangely as though she were her mother, who’d taken the photo and stood seeing this exact same image at the moment it was taken. The mother who’d felt that exact same antithesis of motherly protection over him and shame at what he’d become.

  Michael’s drug addiction had spiralled since his first forays into experimenting with ecstasy in local nightclubs when he was eighteen. It was clear to both Wendy and her mother that Michael was missing a certain love for life which he was replacing with substances, inevitably resulting in his moving on to heroin and crack cocaine, both of which became dangerous addictions.

  He’d tried to kick the habit a number of times, and had succeeded for short periods of time, but Michael was the sort of addict who’d unfortunately always be an addict for one simple reason: he didn’t want to help himself. He’d seen himself as a hopeless cause and had been unable to break the self-fulfilling spiral of depression and substance abuse.

>   What had turned him to do what he did, though, was still a mystery to Wendy. She knew from her experience as a police officer that doing what he’d done and being a drug addict were far from being connected, but part of her had always wondered whether it had caused some sort of chemical alteration in his brain.

  Those long nights when she’d been unable to sleep had often been taken up with her own analyses of what had happened, what had gone wrong. Had there been something lacking in Michael from an early age? Could she recall anything which might have been an early sign that he was going to go on to do what he did? There was nothing that sprung to mind, but then again what would? She knew there was no such thing as the Hollywood early warning sign; no general tendency for would-be evildoers to practice their murderous urges on frogs or mice.

  No matter how many nights she lay awake trying to think of one, she could think of no particular event which could have led Michael down that path, which led her to only one worrying conclusion: that it was something inbuilt. And that, alone, worried her. After all, he was her brother. They were genetically similar.

  Genetically speaking, Michael was half Bill Knight, the much-admired and much-missed legendary murder detective and half Sue Knight, the dearly missed town councillor and mother who’d done so much for her family and local community. Genetically speaking, he should have been the perfect human being. But something had gone very, very wrong.

  The lack of answers and closure had played on Wendy’s mind ever since, but it had had one satisfying resolution: that she was determined to ensure it was the legacies of her parents that lived on; not her brother’s.

  4

  31st August

  Eight and a half years did a lot to a person. It had certainly done a lot to Jack Culverhouse, and he could see it had done a lot to Helen. In many ways she was still the same person he’d known so well, but he could also see the effect life had had on her. In many ways, it had been cruel.