by Deborah Lucy
DEAD OF NIGHT
An absolutely addictive crime thriller with a huge twist
(DI Temple Book 2)
DEBORAH LUCY
First published 2019
Joffe Books, London
www.joffebooks.com
© Deborah Lucy
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 Deborah Lucy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
We hate typos too but sometimes they slip through. Please send any errors you find to [email protected]
We’ll get them fixed ASAP. We’re very grateful to eagle-eyed readers who take the time to contact us.
Please join our mailing list for free Kindle crime thriller, detective, mystery books and new releases.
CONTENTS
Prologue
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
DI TEMPLE BOOKS
GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH SLANG FOR US READERS
To Andrew
Prologue
The body in the boot of the car shifted slightly as the speeding Audi swerved into the bend in the road. In the dark night, the road was awash with sheeting October rain. The driver was unfamiliar with the twists and turns of the desolate, endless criss-cross of roads that spread over Salisbury Plain. His disorientation was made worse as the rain beat like rods on the windscreen, obscuring his view.
He was already at a disadvantage as he squinted at the windscreen, the manic motion of the wipers useless at clearing the deluge. It was pitch black out there. When his passenger looked through the window, out into the night, he saw nothing but his own reflection. There was nothing to guide the way: no lights, no road markings. Even the bright white xenon beam of the headlights failed to alert the driver to a large mass of water pooling in the road ahead.
The water dumped onto the screen with unexpected force and the car aquaplaned, hitting the verge. The driver had no control as the Audi skidded off the road and plunged into the darkness of a plantation of sturdy birch trees. He grappled with the wheel as the lights shone through the thicket. His foot was on the brake but it was useless. Noise filled the car as the metalwork glanced off snapping branches. The car spun as if part of a wild split-second fairground ride, before thudding sidelong into a tree.
The force threw the passenger sprawling across to the driver’s side. Dazed, the two men took a few seconds to get themselves sitting upright, and to regain their orientation. It had all happened so quickly. They looked at each other and silently assessed their surroundings. The car was a hissing mess.
‘Fuck it!’ The Albanian driver beat both his fists on the steering wheel.
The passenger side of the car was pressed hard against the trunk of a tree. After shouldering the driver’s door open, they emerged into the rain. In the darkness they stumbled on the soft, sodden earth and tree roots as they went to the front of the Audi.
‘You got any flame?’ the driver asked his passenger in his broken English, as the rain beat into their faces. His passenger looked back at him.
In the dark, the rivulets of rain ran down the driver’s face and obscured the long scar normally visible across his cheek. But nothing could obscure his opaque right eye. In this light, it was as if he were wearing a mask.
‘No.’
He cursed. Suddenly, they knew they had to get away, and fast. Neither knew exactly where they were, except that they were in the black of the countryside. They could have gone by a more direct route from Swindon to the south coast but decided to go across country, to avoid any police patrols. But they’d soon got lost, taking one wrong turn after another; the dark, twisting roads made for tricky driving in torrential rain, especially for those not familiar with them.
‘Let’s get the fuck out of here,’ said the passenger in his London accent.
‘And the cargo?’ asked the Albanian. The rain was saturating them.
‘Leave it. There’s nothing here to trace back to us once we wipe the car down.’
The driver wasn’t so sure but there was nothing he could do about it now. They used their wet sleeves to vigorously wipe the steering wheel, door handles and the outside of the boot.
A quick look of acknowledgement between them and both started to run in the rain, through the thicket of trees and out the other side to a sodden field, away from the road. They were gone.
* * *
The police patrol car pulled up slowly. The marks in the verge of a vehicle leaving the road were clear. In the dark, amongst the trees, the faint outline of the Audi was visible. A police officer got out of the passenger side. He put his hat on and, torch in hand, slowly walked into the dark void, talking into the radio strapped to his shoulder. His colleague remained in the car and activated the strobe lights on the roof as a warning to any approaching vehicles.
The hard rain had stopped but heavy drips came off the leaves and high branches, and he felt the cold splashes on his exposed hands as he held his torch out. The officer looked in through the open driver’s door, the light of the torch illuminating the front interior. Seeing the area did not contain any passengers, he moved the light to the rear seats. Nobody there. He relayed the number plate into his radio and back to the control room. They would soon know who the vehicle belonged to and could knock on their door.
Standing at the rear of the vehicle, he tried to lift the boot open but it wouldn’t move. Thinking it was jammed from the impact, he walked back to the patrol car to fetch a wrench. Continuing his search, he put the end of it under the edge of the boot and levered it.
As it opened, a barn owl let out its cry, flying low across his eyeline. Almost feeling the flap of its wings on his face, he jumped back, his heart leaping wildly from the unexpected movement. Distracted, he quickly shone his torch inside. Happy that the boot was empty, he slammed it shut, his heart still racing from the surprise of the owl. He walked back to the patrol car, fallen leaves squelching beneath his feet.
‘Anything?’ asked his colleague, as the officer sat back into the pa
ssenger seat.
‘Nothing in the car,’ he replied. ‘Whoever was in there is long gone. The engine’s cold. The plates are moody, nothing on PNC. Fucking owl coming out of nowhere nearly frightened me to death though.’
‘Don’t get comfortable – there’s some tape in the boot. I’ll ask the control room to call out vehicle reclamation.’ The officer looked back at his colleague. ‘That’s if you’re not too scared of the dark.’ The driver had no intention of getting out of the warmth of the police car. Besides, he was the one wearing the stripes. ‘Remember, it’s nearly Halloween. . .’ he added sarcastically as his colleague left his seat.
‘Oh fuck off.’ It had been a long night and the last of a five-night shift. The officer walked to the boot of the patrol car and retrieved a roll of blue-and-white tape, stamped with POLICE. He took it back to the Audi and used the trunks of the trees to create a taped cordon around the car. It would stop another report of it being sent into the control room. Job done, the patrol car resumed its journey.
* * *
Not long after noon the next day, the recovery lorry unloaded the Audi at a breaker’s yard. From the call, Fin Chadwick knew enough to go over the vehicle with a gimlet eye for anything that the police hadn’t retrieved. On many occasions he had discovered money, jewellery, drugs and weapons that he’d been able to sell on. In his opinion, the police were blind or lazy bastards because if he could find it, so could they.
He enjoyed this bit because he never knew what he was going to find. He ran his hands under the seats, pedals, roof lining. He’d have the front dash and side panels off and flooring up before it was crushed. Top locations for stashing any amount of gear. He lifted the boot. He pulled at the boot floor to reach the spare wheel where many a hoard had been found, but his access was restricted by a clump of dark-coloured blankets.
As he pulled them towards him, the blankets slipped off what they were covering. He stiffened, taking a step back. His eyes remained locked onto the object and he stood for a few seconds trying to process what was in front of him. He’d exposed a body, tucked in a foetal position. He was now staring at perfectly formed vertebrae running along a small, purple-grey back.
He stretched his arm out to the blanket the body was lying on and tugged at the edge of it, already worried by the colour of the skin. An arm slipped towards him. The way it fell told him there was no life in it.
He looked closely. It was a small arm, the grey colour of dead flesh. Slim. Small. Not a man’s. Fuck. What was this? He took half a step back and then stood, eyes fixed on the arm, trying to weigh up what to do next. The last thing he needed was the police crawling all over the yard.
Chadwick hesitated. Slowly he stretched out his arm again and tugged at the blanket, hoping against hope that this was a trick. It was nearly Halloween after all. It might be a dummy, someone’s idea of a joke. This time the body moved onto its back and the head flopped to the side at an awkward angle.
Suddenly, the wide eyes of a young girl stared into his, looking straight at him. Her dead face had captured the pain and horror of her last moments of life. Her mouth was set in a grimace and her teeth were bared. Under her chin he saw a wide, deep slash across her throat, almost through to the back of the neck.
He slammed the boot shut and retreated to a nearby Portakabin.
Chapter 1
He killed animals for a living and that’s where the kernel of the idea had begun. The small abattoir that he now struggled to run on his own served a new purpose, what had now become his purpose in life. As he saw it, the end for so many animals provided him with the means to dispose of the problem.
He looked at the man sitting next to him in his car. He was a drunken, stinking heap of sleeping piss and shit. The smell emanating from him was vile, and in the confines of the car it became concentrated. It came from the man’s mouth when he exhaled and from his body, his clothes, his skin. Every pore, every inch of him, gave off a foul-smelling odour. He couldn’t wait to get him out. He smelt worse than any animal.
He had slaughtered thousands of cows, sheep and pigs over the years, each time returning expertly butchered meat, sausages and burger products to eager street food vendors, smallholders and hobby farmers. He’d learnt his trade, knew all about the anatomy of the animals he butchered, and knew exactly how to use his knife.
He preferred game to eat and he caught this himself. He was good at patiently stalking his prey and laying traps. And he was a good shot. His favourite was deer; instinctively shy animals that wouldn’t have been touched by a human hand until dead. He liked to eat animals that lived in the wild and had had the least human contact possible. Because, as he saw it, that was the problem. Human contact.
He wasn’t good at it. He didn’t really get on with people; didn’t like them. He much preferred animals. People left too much behind; everywhere he went he could see traces of them from discarded cans, bottles, food, packets, clothes, dirt, shit. Everywhere he looked, every time he drove or walked through the town. It was true, litter had become an obsession, he acknowledged that, but that was because it was out of control. The more humans there were, the bigger the issue was becoming. But now there was something else.
There was a new and growing problem – a different kind of litter that couldn’t be picked up and put in the bin. This wasn’t just wrappings, discarded paper or plastic. This was flesh and blood. Human litter he called it. And it was everywhere.
They called them ‘homeless’ but it was a misnomer because they were making their homes on the streets, turning doorways into bedrooms and precincts and streets into their living quarters. Men and women sat or lay on pavements, in doorways, on corners and alleyways, like discarded fag ends of society waiting to be swept up. He saw their draggled bodies covered by their fetid clothes, their shoulders slumped with the weight of their existence.
He watched them like he watched his animal prey, watched the things they did, how they reacted as people passed by. He saw how they looked up through cold, empty eyes as they asked again and again of each passer-by through their cracked lips to be given money. Or they just sat and said nothing, shivering against the cold, hoping the mere sight of them was enough to provoke pity and elicit the drop of coins onto the pavement in front of them.
He tried to calm his thoughts but the complete apathy they displayed towards their own lives made him rage. He looked across at the man in the seat next to him. The smell of him was making him gag. As he drove he took an off-white cotton handkerchief from his trouser pocket and pressed it to his lips. The feel of the material calmed him. He had to calm down.
The abattoir was situated in a remote corner in the far north of the county, and it was his mother who had said that it suited his personality. What she meant was the lack of it. She knew he needed to be kept out of society. Society didn’t suit him. He needed his own world.
‘Brian, you stay inside your head and think too much,’ she said. He could still hear her saying it. ‘That’s why you’ve got all those little tics.’ That’s what she called them. Tics. The endless washing of his hands. The constant need to wipe his mouth with a cotton handkerchief. Always picking things up off the ground.
She had been right though, it did suit him. He loved his job, loved the animals; he relished seeing how they came in alive and once he’d killed them, how he turned them into meat. The process of it gave him a good deal of satisfaction. It was no different with humans.
Eventually he arrived, able to pull the car right up to a side door. He was only too pleased to get out. He’d turned the heater on in the car to help keep his passenger in a comatose state, but the stench it generated was evil. The dirty bastard.
He got out and went round to the passenger side door and opened it. Holding his breath, he took hold of the man’s arm and yanked him out of his seat, half waking him in the process. In a drowsy but compliant haze, he came out easily enough. Getting him through the side door into the small lairage area was also easy. The alcohol had rendered t
he man’s mind incapable of registering where he was, never mind any danger he might be in.
Offered a simple metal chair to sit on in the half-light, just while he told the man he had to find the key for the room he could stay in, the beggaring fool didn’t even feel the cold steel of a captive bolt pistol against the side of his head. On firing, he slumped forward instantly. Pushing the man back on the chair he fired another bolt into his chest. Dead.
Halloween and Bonfire Night were approaching and there were any number of community firework displays and football matches in the area over the next few evenings. The distraction of a goal or people gazing up at firework displays would ensure no one paid too close attention to the hotdog or burger in their hand.
Chapter 2
It had been the television programme Prayer Taylor saw a year ago that had first sparked her curiosity about her identity. Her adoptive parents Patrick and Fiona Taylor had been very good about it. Of course she should know the truth; of course she should go. They knew that at sixteen, Prayer was of an age now when these things started to matter.
The Taylors had always been open with her and had explained to her when she was very young that she had been adopted. They felt it was important for her to know; they didn’t want her to find out in the school playground. It was important for them to explain that she was special and had been chosen by them. And besides, they knew this day would come eventually. They had spoken of it often, although never in her presence. They spoke of it so they could prepare themselves for when it came, as they knew it would.
With the help of the charity and adoption service, they’d traced her birth mother to Swindon. Patrick and Fiona Taylor had dismissed the need to know about the background of their daughter’s mother at the time of the adoption; frankly, they didn’t want to know right then. They didn’t want to spoil their moment and have to consider her, about how she might be feeling having given up her beautiful five-day-old baby daughter, the most perfect thing they had ever seen. The three of them were starting a new future together, and they didn’t want it marred by such thoughts as how the mother might be coping.
