by Robert Innes
Skeletons
Robert Innes
Published by Robert Innes in 2018
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © Robert Innes.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For questions and comments about this book, please contact [email protected]
Contents
Also by Robert Innes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
That Night
Thank You!
Also by Robert Innes
Also by Robert Innes
The Blake Harte Mystery Series
Untouchable
Confessional
Ripples
Reach
Spotlight
Flatline
Skeletons
The Gold & Silver Mystery Series
The Hung Jury
The Poison Pen
1
Blake Harte had never been a fan of supermarkets, especially when they were busy. As he pushed his shopping trolley down the produce aisle, he held in several tuts and disapproving glares as two children ran around in front of him, blocking his path to the brown onions.
“Sorry, love,” said their stressed looking mother as she grabbed them both by the arm in one fell swoop, before her face contorted into the sort of rage that only came from mothers who had not slept properly in days. “Will you stay by my side and stop messing about?”
Blake gave her a glib smile and watched as the now screaming children were dragged away. He found that he had to be in the mood to deal with children, and his current mood, trying to get everything he needed before the store closed was most certainly not the right one.
The reason for Blake’s urgency was because he wanted to surprise his boyfriend with his favourite meal when he got home from work. Harrison Baxter loved lasagne, and while Blake was certainly no great chef, he knew enough to make the dish well.
Normally, there would be no great urgency to such an event, but Blake had a great deal of making up to do. Two weeks ago, Blake had come out of hospital having had his appendix removed. The procedure would normally have been swift and complication free, but Blake had discharged himself before he was ready to come out of hospital and had been left with an infection, which had earned him an even longer spell at Clackton General. On top of this, Blake had not been completely honest with Harrison and had put his own life in danger, all because there had been a murder to investigate and Blake was apparently incapable of putting anything other than his job first, including his own wellbeing. Now, Blake was in grovel mode, but he knew that the way to Harrison’s heart was through his stomach. As he picked up a two pack of garlic bread on his way to the tills, he felt confident that he would be back in his boyfriend’s good books by the end of the evening.
As Blake approached the checkouts, he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. When he reached the end of the shortest queue, he pulled it out of his pocket and stared at the screen in confusion as he saw, for the third time that day, his ex-boyfriend’s name on the screen.
“What the hell do you want?” Blake murmured as he let the call go to answerphone. Blake had been with Nathan for five years before he had walked in on him in bed with a woman, which was why he had moved to the village of Harmschapel in the first place. Nathan had ended up marrying the woman Blake had caught him with, until Blake had figured out that his wife was involved in a murder. Since those events nearly a year ago, Blake and Nathan had not spoken, and it mystified Blake as to why Nathan would be getting in touch with him now, especially with this amount of urgency.
Putting Nathan out of his mind, Blake finally made his way through the checkout and loaded his trolley up with his bags. As he began making his way towards the exit, he became aware of a woman a few tills down who looked to be visibly distressed. She had a mass of frizzy brown hair cascading down her shoulders and was gripping her handbag tightly, tears in her eyes. As Blake glanced next to her, she saw a man he recognised as Patrick Coopland, Harmschapel’s undertaker. The woman with him, Blake assumed, was his wife, Angela. He had never actually met Angela, but he had heard about her in conversation.
Patrick was glaring at his wife furiously as he dumped their bags in the shopping trolley. “I’ve never been so embarrassed. Why do you always do this sort of thing?” he hissed.
“I’m sorry,” Angela replied. “I just forgot to transfer the money across, that’s all. It’s sorted now, isn’t it?”
Blake watched as Patrick slammed the last bag in their trolley angrily. “My own card declined. I have a reputation to keep up! How’s it going to look if it seems I can’t afford my own bloody shopping?”
Blake frowned as he watched Angela cower slightly as Patrick shoved her aside and pushed their trolley towards the exit. Blake picked up speed and followed them out of the store and towards the carpark.
“I said I’m sorry,” Angela told him, raising her voice now they were out of the supermarket. “It’s a simple mistake, anyone could do it. I just forgot to transfer it!”
“Anyone could do it, but especially you,” Patrick spat.
As it happened, the couple were parked a few spaces away from Blake, but he would have followed them to the other end of the carpark if necessary. He continued watching them as he loaded his own shopping into the back of his car.
“I don’t get how one woman could have such low intelligence,” Patrick snapped as he unlocked the boot to their silver Jaguar and thrust it open. “A child makes the mistakes in life that you do!”
Angela looked down at the ground and wrung her hands together, her body seeming tense. Blake had seen enough.
“Excuse me,” he said loudly, slamming his car boot shut. “Do you always speak to people like that, or do you reserve it for those you marry?”
Patrick looked up sharply, his expression dark. Angela looked horrified.
“I beg your pardon?” Patrick exclaimed. “Do I know you?”
“No, I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure,” Blake replied, pulling his ID out of his pocket. “Detective Sergeant Blake Harte from Harmschapel. I think you’re the undertaker of the village, aren’t you?”
Patrick visibly stiffened as he caught sight of Blake’s ID. “I am, yes.”
“Right. I’m guessing the dead don’t normally care how they’re spoken to,” Blake said, putting his ID away. “But I think you’ll find the living have slightly more feelings. From what I heard, your wife only forgot to transfer some money across to you. It was hardly worthy of that level of verbal assault.”
Patrick seemed to be holding in a huge barrage of abuse. He rocked on the tip of his toes, spluttering while throwing furious glares at Angela. She was staring down, her mass of wiry hair covering her face, clearly wishing the ground could swallow her up. Blake immediately wondered if interfering had been his best move, but he knew there was no way he could not have intervened.
Eventually, Patrick turned to his wife. “Just get in the car!” he snappe
d furiously. He climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door behind him.
Angela nodded obediently and began to push their now empty trolley towards one of the bays. Blake put a hand on the trolley and gave her a kind smile.
“If you need to talk to someone, confidentially, Harmschapel police station is always open. There’s numbers you can call too.”
Angela’s eyes widened in fear. “I’m fine, thank you.”
“Really?” Blake said quietly. “You don’t look it. You don’t deserve to be spoken to like that, nobody does.”
“Angela!” came a cry from the car.
Angela jumped and turned back. She pushed the trolley in the direction of the bay. It trundled across the carpark into the path of an oncoming Ford Focus. It braked sharply and a loud blast sounded from the car horn.
“He’s never laid a finger on me,” Angela muttered. “I’m fine.”
Before Blake could reply, Angela had hurried around the car and climbed inside. In a second, the Jaguar roared into life and disappeared from the carpark. Blake watched it screech around the bend and sighed sadly, thinking of Harrison. When they had met, Harrison had been in the grips of a violent relationship himself, and it had taken quite some time to help him turn into the more confident and self-assured version of himself he was today, though Blake could tell there were still scars. He hated the thought of Harrison being made to feel as low and as anxious as Angela clearly did.
Blake disposed of his own trolley and then climbed into his car. Immediately, his phone began ringing in his pocket again.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he muttered as he saw Nathan trying to contact him for a fourth time. Deciding that it would be better to get whatever Nathan wanted to say to him out of the way, Blake answered the phone.
“Hello?”
There was a pause on the end of the line. “Hi, Blake,” came a quiet but instantly recognisable Irish accent. “How have you been?”
“I’m fine,” Blake replied shortly. “What’s so urgent?”
Again, Nathan paused.
“Nathan?” Blake said. “What’s wrong?”
Nathan sighed. “Okay. I’ve had a phone call.”
“From?”
“Blakey, this isn’t easy for me to say. I haven’t quite come to terms with it myself yet.”
Blake was immediately too worried to tell Nathan that he hated being called ‘Blakey’.
“What? What’s happened?”
“Do you remember Kieran? Kieran Partridge?”
Blake did remember Kieran. They had only met a handful of times, but Blake had been immediately struck by how catty and bitchy he was. He was the type who seemed to enjoy sitting with all his girlfriends, cigarette in hand, caustically remarking on anybody who he deemed to be his lesser, whether they were in ear-shot or not. This was normally greeted by a ton of shocked but delighted giggling from his cronies. He also had a reputation around Manchester of being a highly promiscuous individual and it was fairly common knowledge, even to Blake who had never taken an interest in the goings on of the ‘scene’ that he had slept his way along the width and breadth of Canal Street. In short, Blake had not been a fan.
“Yes, what about him? If you’re ringing to tell me that he’s been involved in a horrible accident, I really couldn’t care less.”
“I’m really sorry, Blake. I genuinely am,” Nathan replied slowly. “This isn’t going to be easy to hear.” He sounded like he was taking a deep breath, to the point where Blake almost told him to get on with it. “Kieran rang me to say he’s been diagnosed with HIV. Seems he got it from someone a few years back, but he’s only just found out.”
Blake raised his eyebrows. “I can’t say I’m surprised, the way he slept around. Lesson to be learned is protection.”
Again, Nathan sighed heavily. Blake’s eyes narrowed.
“Why are you ringing to tell me this, Nathan?”
“I slept with him. It was a few months before we broke up.”
Blake’s mouth fell open. “You slept with him? While we were together?”
“I was drunk, Blake,” Nathan protested, as if it was an excuse that gave him an automatic clean slate of responsibility. “We’d had a really huge argument. I went out, and I was drinking really heavily. He was there, it just happened.”
Blake shook his head in disbelief. “So, while you were two-timing me with your ex-wife, you also found time to go and sleep with Kieran Partridge? Wow. I mean, really Nathan, that’s some impressive productivity. I thought you were an arsehole enough, but clearly I had no idea.”
“You’re missing my point, Blake,” Nathan replied irritably.
Blake frowned, then, a second later, felt the realisation of what Nathan was trying to tell him surging through him like a severe electric shock. His mouth suddenly went extremely dry.
“Nathan,” he said quietly. “Please tell me you used protection.”
“I don’t know,” Nathan told him. “Like I said, I was drunk. Wasted in fact.”
Blake was starting to feel slightly lightheaded. “Have you been tested?”
“I’m waiting for my results,” Nathan replied. “I went to get tested a few days ago as it happens. Before I found this out. So, they would have done an all-round test. I’m just ringing to tell you that you might want to do the same.”
Blake could not believe what he was hearing. “You’re telling me that I might have it? I might have HIV?” Nathan did not reply for a moment. “Is that what you’re telling me, Nathan?” Blake shouted.
“Yes!” Nathan exclaimed. “I’m sorry, but there’s a chance if I’ve got it, you might as well. So, you might want to have a chat with that boyfriend of yours. I’m sorry, Blake. I just thought you should know.”
Blake felt the phone fall out of his hand. It clattered into the footwell. He leant against the steering wheel and stared ahead, breathing heavily, the sound of Nathan’s voice still echoing slightly from his phone.
2
Harrison could not have been happier that it was Sunday. The shop had been busy, and for most of the day, he had found himself being dragged between the tills and the shop floor by customers and by his manager. An upcoming visit from Head Office had sent Harrison’s boss, Jai Sinha, into a frenzy. He had spent the entire day instructing Harrison to clean shelves while biting his head off whenever he saw a customer waiting at the till. Jai was normally a kind, if not slightly eccentric, boss, so Harrison knew that none of it was coming from a place of malice. Even so, Harrison was delighted when he looked at the clock on the wall and saw that it was closing time in no less than half an hour. He was looking forward to having a long hot shower when he got home.
“I don’t know!” Jai exclaimed from the back of the shop. He stood up from where he had been crouched, attempting to stick a feather duster underneath one of the shelves. “You need one day where the customers don’t cause chaos and you get them coming in wanting everything! Sometimes I wish we had a supermarket in Harmschapel. They want us for everything!”
Harrison smiled as he watched Jai pull his trousers up from where they had slipped down. “You don’t mean that, Jai. You’d be lost if you didn’t have so many customers to serve every day. We both know that.”
Jai grunted in reply as he redid his buttons on his loud Hawaiian shirt. “What head office want, I do not know. Why do they have to just decide they’re coming? All it does it put stress on me! You know, in my father’s shop in Trinidad, he is his own boss. Nobody comes to give him a hard time.”
Harrison nodded, having heard about Jai’s father countless times before. From what Jai had told him, his father was a greatly respected man. Harrison wondered how different Jai and his father were. If Jai had learnt everything he knew about owning a shop from his father, then Harrison was convinced that they were more similar than Jai even cared to admit.
After serving a few more customers, Harrison took a sip of his tea that had now gone cold underneath the till and decided to fill the rest of the ti
me by sorting out the carrier bags and till rolls beneath the counter. When he next looked up, he saw one of Blake’s officers, PC Mini Patil, wandering around the shop.
“Afternoon, Mini,” Harrison said cheerfully. The two of them had always got on rather well, in fact Harrison remembered giving her advice on how to go about her first date with her boyfriend and colleague at the station, Billy Mattison.
Patil turned at the sound of his voice. “Oh, hi!”
“You not working today?”
Patil shook her head. “No, thank God. I’m not feeling too well to be honest. Have you got anything for an upset stomach?”
Harrison stepped out from behind the counter and led her to the medicine shelf. “I’m no pharmacist,” he said, before picking up a packet of tablets. “Here you go, though. Says it settles stomachs. You feeling sick?”
“You’re not kidding,” Patil told him, looking nauseous. Harrison could see that her face was quite pale as they walked back towards the counter for her to pay. “I dunno if it’s something I ate,” she said pulling her purse out of her pocket. “I know this though, I’m not letting Matti cook again for a while.”
She passed Harrison a five-pound note and he rang the transaction through the till.
“I was going to ask if you fancied a coffee or something tomorrow?” Harrison asked her, handing her the change. “That’s as long as Jai lets me out and doesn’t hold me captive.”
“I heard that!” came Jai’s booming voice from the back of the shop.
