“Are your parents still working?”
“No. Well, yes—they work for themselves. They live just outside a little market town called Bishop’s Castle. Daddy has his own workshop on the property, and he restores old plant machinery that he sells at auction. They also have a few animals, and grow their own vegetables and stuff. Mammy makes jam and chutney, and she travels around the local farmers’ markets on the weekends.”
“Sounds idyllic. Why on Earth would you want to leave?”
“Oh, you know. I love it there, but nothing happens from one month to the next.”
“Yes. I do know, actually. I was born and bred in Sussex, but when I was thirteen, we moved just outside of Newby Bridge, a little place on the southern tip of Lake Windermere.”
“Oh, nice. I’ve always wanted to visit the Lake District.”
“Have you never been?”
She shook her head.
“You’d love it. We had a holiday home in Bowness-on-Windermere when I was a kid. Back then, my parents owned The West Sussex Express. When they sold it, they supposedly bought the lake house with the intention of retiring. A likely story. In fact, they were busier after they moved than they were before. Anyhow, they bought out HGT, the company that owned AdCor previously.”
“Are they still alive?” she asked.
“Sadly, no. My dad got sick on a trip overseas. Ate something he shouldn’t, and the proud old bugger didn’t tell anybody how bad he felt. He died in an Indian hospital a week later. I was eighteen.”
“That’s awful. I’m so sorry, Max.”
He nodded, his eyes glistening. “Then, my mum just gave up work from that moment on. Thankfully, they had enough reliable staff to make sure the company ticked along. But, the pressure was on me to step up almost right away.”
“And your mother?”
“She died less than twelve months later. She had no desire to live without Dad.”
“That’s so sad. To love somebody so much you’d die of a broken heart.” She felt tears pricking at her own eyes and had to pull herself together. She found it so easy to forget he was her boss.
*
It was raining when they left the restaurant. Thankfully, Jackson had moved the limo, and parked it directly outside the door.
Max said his goodbyes, and watched as she got inside, before he turned, and headed in the opposite direction.
She’d presumed he’d share the car with her—he had been drinking, after all. And, although they’d had an amazing evening, there wasn’t any mention of doing it again. She suddenly felt deflated.
The wet street shone from the light of the street lamps as she reminisced about the night. Max had been great. He was a terrific listener and so funny. She smiled broadly just thinking about him. She knew she was falling for him. She also knew she was being incredibly foolish.
The limo stopped, and she was jolted back to reality as Jackson opened her door.
“Can I show you inside, miss?”
“There’s no need. Thanks for everything, Jackson.” She covered her head with her handbag and ran towards the stairs.
It was midnight and she felt alive. She was finally living the dream she’d had as far back as she could remember—to swap the laid-back lifestyle for the city, fall in love with a prince, and live happily ever after. Oh, well. Maybe her dream was right out of a fairy story, but tonight, the reality had been close enough.
Chapter 9
Steve Miller had been furious with the message left in the daybook, but he was adamant he would bring Don to task tonight. He planned to time it just right.
After his shift finished, Steve met up with an old friend in the city to kill a few hours. They ate dinner in Chinatown, and he got a cab back to AdCor at around 10 pm. The beers he’d drunk over dinner fired him up even more, and he was more than ready to take Don down a peg or two.
Ken Barber, the youngest member of the team, was on the front desk. He jumped up, clearly shocked to see his boss at that time of night.
“Hey, mate. How are you doing?” Steve liked Ken. He was hard-working and pleasant to be around.
“I’m good, yeah.” Ken gulped, clearly unsure of what to say.
Steve nodded. “Good to hear, mate. Hey, you haven’t seen me, okay?”
“Of course, sir.”
He knew he could trust Ken. He just hoped he’d left it late enough to catch Don at whatever it was he’d been up to. He approached the security hub, swiped his card and let himself in.
Don didn’t hear him enter. He was too engrossed with the video links playing on six of the screens. Don paused one of the videos, rewound it, and played it back as the girl, who Steve now recognised as Hannah McLaughlin, undressed and stepped into a bathtub. Another screen showed the girl’s emails.
“What the …”
Without warning, Don jumped to his feet. With lightning ferocity, he smashed Steve around the side of the head with his steel torch.
***
A thick spray of Steve’s blood covered the fuse cabinet, before he slumped to the ground with a deathly moan.
Don sat back in the leather chair. He hadn’t felt so pumped since he was first under fire in Afghanistan. Springing to his feet again, he jumped on the spot, letting out a guttural roar.
“Help me, please.”
Steve’s whispered voice jolted Don back to reality and the gravity of what he’d done. He ran to the storeroom across the hall and grabbed some hand towels, placing them around Steve’s head to mop up the blood.
After lifting Steve into the chair, Don paused the cameras and looped them. Being a surveillance expert, he figured he’d rather not have a recording of the next bit, just in case something prevented him getting back to erase the evidence.
He wheeled Steve in the chair towards the lift, thankful the older man had decided to pay him a visit so late—any earlier and the place would have been like Piccadilly Station.
Semi-conscious, Steve kept groaning and pleading with him.
“You couldn’t keep your big fucking nose out, could you? Oh, no. Always wanting to be one step ahead,” Don muttered, his face in a continuous sneer. He slammed the heel of his hand on the lift button.
The doors opened with a ping.
Don struggled to get the stupid chair inside as one of the wheels caught in the gap. With another roar, he launched the chair over the threshold, slamming Steve into the wall opposite. Using Steve’s security pass, he selected the eleventh floor.
When the doors opened, he pushed Steve and the chair out. Using Steve’s pass again, he entered a sequence of numbers to send the lift to the top floor in fault mode. Once the lift light had stopped, he forced the doors open using his keys. A rush of cold air came from the open shaft.
He removed the towels from Steve’s head. “Don’t look at me like that, you pathetic fucking pig. You brought all this on yourself. You hear me?”
Steve, barely conscious, didn’t respond, which riled Don all the more. He kicked the ignorant bastard several times, before pushing the chair towards the shaft. Without hesitation, he tipped Steve face-first over the edge, hearing him land, moments later, with a sickening splat. Don smiled, closed the doors, and called the lift again.
“Going down,” he said to himself, with a self-satisfied smile.
Don returned to the security hub, pushing the empty chair, and began cleaning the blood away. Afterwards, he recorded two hours of empty corridors, and ran it over the footage from before Steve’s arrival. This would show him turn up, and head to the lifts, but not where he went from there. He registered an alarm call on the computer system, showing the lift doors on the eleventh floor seemed to be jammed in the open position, and sent a text alert to all departments. Then, he sent the lift to the sky deck and locked it off. He reset the computer log for his rounds, and did a key check. He copied the previous night’s screen, changed the date, but left the time sequence alone, and then, pasted it over the current loop. That would provide his alibi.
Satisfied with ev
erything, he ran his eyes around the room one final time. Everywhere appeared spotlessly clean. He turned to the monitors and said goodnight to Hannah with a kiss to the screen. Before leaving, he ran the scramble code which would hide all the links and live feeds he had running—no one would find them. The army had been good to him, and the technical stuff they had taught him whilst in khaki was coming in very useful.
Chapter 10
Hannah woke to the sun blazing through a chink in the curtains. She winced, groaning, and ducking her head back under the covers. It was far too early to wake up.
After an hour of tossing and turning she gave up, wrapped herself in her long, pale pink satin robe, and headed to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. She carried her mug and this month’s Glam magazine, and settled on the balcony.
The community she was now a part of was coming to life, and she enjoyed people-watching from her perch above the streets.
A short time later, she heard Simon’s door open, and his head appeared above the partition moments after.
“Oh, hello.” She smiled lazily.
“Hello, beautiful. You look a little worse for wear. I heard you stagger in past midnight.”
“I hardly staggered in, cheeky. And it wasn’t after midnight, as it happens.”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t before. You barely made it through the door, before your carriage turned back into a pumpkin.” He laughed.
“You’re a nutcase.”
“I’ve been called much worse. Anyway, can I get you a hair of the dog?”
Hannah grinned. “I’ve only ever heard my dad say that. And no, thank you. I’ll pass.”
“Are you sure? I’ve been down to the Turkish deli on the high street and bought six bottles of my favourite Zinfandel rosé.”
“Six bottles! Are you planning on getting trashed?”
“They’re not all for tonight. They were on special. Plus, I got four family-sized bags of peanut M&Ms—sheer heaven.”
Exasperated by his energy, Hannah rolled her eyes. “I thought you were working this weekend.”
“No. I decided there was no need, and, to be quite frank, I’ve switched off. It must be because I’m leaving in a few weeks. Anyway, what are your plans for the day, because I was thinking about firing up the barbecue, and getting stuck into some chilled rosé? What do you say?”
Hannah considered his offer for a second. She knew Diane was working all weekend, so she would be putting herself at Simon’s mercy. She nodded. “Yes, that would be very nice,” she eventually said. “What would you like me to bring? Not M&Ms, I hope?”
“No.” Simon laughed. “That’s for dessert, silly.”
***
Saturday morning meetings were a regular occurrence for Max. He didn’t relish them, but as head of the Northwest Division, it meant sacrifices. As he waited for the others to arrive, his thoughts slipped back to Hannah, and the evening they’d shared.
If he was honest with himself, he was deeply attracted to the quirky young woman. He’d always avoided any personal relationships with employees, but plenty had tried to change his mind. Especially his last PA, Daniella Vespucci. She had come highly recommended by the CEO of HGT Euro, based in Paris. She was apparently homesick, and longed to return to her family in Manchester. However, it wasn’t long before Max found out the true reason. Daniella had been sleeping with her boss for over two years, but when his wife began to ask questions, he needed to get rid of her, and fast.
Daniella became a handful very quickly. She was too touchy feely for Max’s liking, and made no bones about letting him know she had her sights set firmly in his direction. Then, one day, after a couple of months, she appeared in his office, wearing nothing but a G-string and suspender belt. He found her splayed wantonly on top of his desk.
After that, he decided she had to go, but the problem he had was how to do it legally, without breaching company rules and regulations. He needn’t have worried. Soon after, he discovered she’d been seeing one of his project managers, John Farley, and had fallen pregnant—clearly her ploy to snare herself a husband from the start. When John confided in Max, he told him he should to do the right thing by her. Daniella and John were married in Scotland within weeks, and Max arranged a promotion for him to the Glasgow office.
That was the reason he avoided employees like the plague, but something felt different with Hannah, although he couldn’t pinpoint why.
He glanced at his watch, and wondered what was keeping the others.
Moments later, Angela arrived looking deathly pale. “Max, we appear to have a problem.”
***
The vibration of his mobile phone on the bedside table woke Don from a deep, satisfying sleep. He glanced at the bright red numbers of his alarm clock—9.23am. He reached for his phone.
“Hello.”
“Is that you, Don?” Angela Beanie’s no-nonsense clipped tones assaulted his ear.
“Yes, I was sleeping. What do you want?”
“I apologise for that, however, we have an urgent issue. Mr Myers has asked if you would come back to work, ASAP?”
Don rubbed at his face with his free hand and groaned. “Can’t Miller deal with it?”
“Impossible, I’m afraid,” Angela said, her voice giving nothing away. “Will you come?”
“I suppose I have no choice. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Within the hour, Don noticed two fire crews, police, and paramedics down the service lane to the side of the building, as he pulled into the carpark. He rushed through the back entrance into the main reception. Everything seemed calm. If not for the two suited men Myers and Angela stood talking to, nothing was amiss.
Myers spotted Don, and acknowledged him with a nod of his head before excusing himself from the group.
“Don. Thanks for coming in.” He shook Don’s hand warmly and slapped his shoulder.
“No problem, sir. I saw the emergency services outside. What’s happened?”
“Did you happen to see Steve Miller last night?”
“No. Was I supposed to? He doesn’t usually stay behind after his shift.”
Max shook his head. “Well, it seems he decided to come back last night to do a safety audit of the night shift.”
“Are you sure? That doesn’t sound like something Steve would do.”
“That’s what I thought, but he was definitely here. Although it isn’t clear what for, or why he didn’t log his movements.”
“Am I missing something, sir? What exactly is the problem?”
Max pinched the top of his nose between his eyes, and sighed. “Follow me,” he said. “We’ll walk and talk.”
Don fell into step beside the younger man.
“It appears, after you left this morning, we received a call from Mrs Miller concerned about her husband. She informed Angela he’d told her there was an issue he needed to attend to here last night. When he wasn’t home by this morning, she began to worry.”
“I’m sure she did. Maybe he went out on the town instead, and crashed on somebody’s sofa.”
“That was the opinion of Angela, at the time, although she didn’t say as much to Mrs Miller.”
Don nodded. “So, what changed her mind?”
“At 8.15am, an engineer arrived to say we had a fault showing on number three lift. They found it to be jammed at the sky deck floor. During an inspection of the bottom counterweight and safety systems, they spotted what looked like a body.”
Don gasped. “A body?”
Max nodded. “The fire department and the police were called. But, it’s quite clear from the photograph the police provided it’s Steven Miller.”
Don gasped and spun away, feigning total shock. He dramatically leaned against the closest wall, struggling to catch his breath. He made a show of trying to pull himself together, then turned back to his boss. “I’m sorry, sir. Do we know how it happened?”
“At the moment, they believe he fell from the eleventh floor. The memory card showed at
10.48pm, the doors on eleven had jammed open. They reset fifteen minutes later, at which point the lift went to the safety position on the sky deck.”
“It doesn’t make sense. Why would he…?”
Max sighed deeply, shaking his head. “The video evidence only shows Steven walking towards the lift. He appeared happy enough, and more importantly, he was alone.”
“I can’t believe it. He was such a careful guy. How can something like this happen? Why didn’t he tell anyone he was coming?”
“I don’t know,” Max said. “He obviously had his reasons for returning. We’ll know more when we hear from the coroner with the autopsy report. However, the police think he may have received a text alert regarding a fault with lift three. His phone was smashed and will take time to check, but we’re thinking he lost his balance and fell.”
Don closed his eyes and scratched his forehead. “Poor Steve. This is such a shock.”
“I know. But, until I sort this mess out, can I ask you to take over as Head of Security?”
“No problem, Mr Myers. I already do a lot of Steve’s work, anyway. I won’t let you down.”
“That’s great. Thanks. I’m relieved I can rely on you. Now, go and get some sleep, and we’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, by the way, Don. Maybe we should try to refer to him as Mr Miller, not Steve. It will show more respect, at this time.”
Don turned and watched his boss walk away towards the lift. His eyes could have burned holes the size of cannon shells in Max’s back.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re speaking to?” he muttered, once there was enough distance between them. “Fucking mouthy bastard.”
***
Hannah threw on her denim shorts and a pink T-shirt. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. A perfect day for a barbecue. She slipped on her sandals and headed out to the deli.
The Watcher : A Chilling Serial Killer Thriller Page 6
