Requiem

by David Hodges

  Requiem

  David Hodges

  Contents

  Title Page

  author’s note

  before the fact

  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

  after the fact

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  author’s note

  ALTHOUGH THE ACTION of the novel takes place in the Avon & Somerset police area, the story itself and all the characters in it are entirely fictitious. Similarly, at the time of writing, there is no police station in Highbridge. This has been drawn entirely from the author’s imagination to ensure no connection is made between any existing police station or personnel in the force and the content of the novel. I would also point out that I have used some poetic licence in relation to the local police structure and some of the specific procedures followed by the Avon & Somerset Constabulary in order to meet the requirements of the plot – for example, changing the name of the force’s present road policing unit to that of traffic, which is a more traditional generic title, as well as referring to a police technical support unit to avoid any connection with the hi-tech crime unit currently operating within the force. Nevertheless, the policing background depicted in the novel is broadly in accord with the national picture and these little departures from fact will, hopefully, not spoil the reading enjoyment of serving or retired police officers for whom I have the utmost respect.

  before the fact

  TWISTER COULD HEAR the barking of the police dogs, see the blue lights flashing above the buildings behind him, illuminating the night sky with an ethereal ghostly brilliance. At least the moon had faded again, which gave him a chance, but the pain in his abdomen was tearing him apart and he could feel the blood soaking into his underclothes from the knife wound, despite the bandages he had so expertly applied.

  His fevered thoughts burrowed through the fog clouding his brain, taking him back to another time and another place, where, as a member of an elite SAS unit and despite a nasty combat wound, he had been forced into a gruelling retreat through four miles of swamp to the helicopter RV. As he hallucinated, he could once more feel the sticky heat on his perspiring skin, taste the decaying stench of the mangroves as he waded through the tepid leech-infested lagoons, one hand pressed against the wound in his side from the guerrilla’s bayonet. He had managed to survive the experience intact, despite loss of blood and a serious infection, but only because of his outstanding physical fitness. This time was different, however.

  Although still fitter than most, age and drink had taken its toll on him and, after less than two miles, he knew he was about done. The street lamps were fuzzy white balls in his distorted vision, the sweat pouring down his face in rivulets and he could feel his heart thudding with the desperation of an over-taxed engine running out of oil. Ten minutes maximum, even with his state of fitness, and then his legs – already trembling fitfully – would buckle and he would hit the pavement. Finish.

  But he couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t let Old Bill nail him and stick him in some shit-hole of a cell like before – this time to await a life sentence in stir for multiple murder. He had to make it to the address that had been imprinted on his memory for so long – the address his old mate, Louie the Dip had given him, the day before his release from Wandsworth, just in case he ever needed it. Well – bloody hell – he needed it now!

  He found the alleyway, snaking off between the back gardens of a small development and then, as he emerged into a cul-de-sac, he saw the house, an old detached place set back among some trees in the far corner. Number 8, that was it. He made it to the front doorstep, feeling the blood squelching in his shoes, then collapsed with his hand on the bell.

  Sunlight slanted in through the vertical blinds. A small, brightly painted bedroom with a couple of mobiles rotating gently in a cool breeze on hooks attached to the ceiling. Twister’s gaze took in the bed – just like the sort they used in hospitals – and the tall stand by his head with a tube running from a plastic or nylon bag (who cared which?) suspended from the top of it to his bandaged wrist. A cable was taped to his naked chest and connected to what looked like a monitor on the wall and an ominous looking cylinder, with a face mask attached, stood beside it. Oxygen? Probably – thank the gods he didn’t need it.

  Raising the edge of the sheet which covered him to waist level, he examined his heavily bandaged abdomen, noting what looked like old bloodstains down one side and feeling sudden soreness from the catheter that had been inserted. He felt sick and let the sheet fall back over him, closing his eyes tightly for a second to give his swimming senses time to stabilize.

  He didn’t hear the sound of the bedroom door, but jerked his eyes open when the voice spoke. ‘Ah, back with the living now, I see.’

  His visitor was short, plump and balding, with a pointed, black beard and moustache, like one of the Cavaliers from a Dumas novel, and his smile seemed to be a permanent fixture. ‘Doctor Leasing,’ he said, ‘Hammond Leasing. You had a very nasty knife wound, but thankfully, there doesn’t appear to be any serious damage to your internal organs.’

  ‘How long have I been here?’ Twister queried, tensing and glancing quickly towards the window at the sound of a distant siren.

  ‘Just over a week.’

  ‘A week?’

  The doctor nodded. ‘You had a nasty fever after I stitched you up and you’ve been out of it for several days.’

  Twister let his head fall back on the pillow. ‘And how long will I stay here?’

  Leasing pursed his lips. ‘I would think that a man as fit as you could be up and about in, say, a further two weeks.’

  Twister nodded. ‘Excellent. You’ve done a good job.’

  The smile seemed to broaden. ‘Nothing is too much for a friend of Louie’s.’

  Twister frowned. ‘How do you know about Louie?’

  ‘You told me while I was stitching you up – quite informative, you were.’

  ‘How informative?’

  Leasing sighed. ‘Do you know, I’ve forgotten already,’ he said meaningly.

  Twister nodded his approval. ‘Let’s keep it that way,’ he said, wondering why Leasing had been struck off by the GMC and reduced to looking after injured cons instead. Despite his curiosity, however, he decided it would be imprudent to ask under the circumstances.

  Instead he said, ‘I’ve a contact I need to ring, to fix up somewhere for me to lie low once I’m fit enough to travel.’

  The little man pointed to a telephone on the bedside table. ‘Yours to use whenever you want to. Be my guest. And after you’ve made your arrangements and are ready to leave, we can talk about my fee, eh?’

  Twister studied him with a narrow smile of his own. Seeing as he didn’t actually have any money to pay for his medical treatment, there
wasn’t very much they had to talk about. But that didn’t really matter, for he had already planned to kill the nice doctor when the time came anyway. In fact, he was looking forward to the moment and, with what he was planning for the future, he couldn’t afford to leave any loose ends behind anyway, could he?

  chapter 1

  THE MAN IN the red Volvo spotted the girl when he turned the corner. She was standing under the same street lamp as the previous night, one foot up against the adjoining wall, her provocative silhouette partially wreathed in the smoky mist that had drifted into Bridgwater off the Somerset Levels. He braked gently, almost stalling the stolen Volvo’s stammering engine, and pulled in closer to the kerb, flicking the switch of the front passenger window seconds before the car came to a stop. As the window slid down, the dank smell of the marshes that lay just beyond the town rolled into the car, awakening carefully stored memories and supercharging his adrenalin so that for a few seconds he could hardly breathe.

  ‘You lookin’ for some more business, love?’ the young woman called, recognizing him and coming off the wall to peer in through the open window.

  Once again an adrenalin surge hit him with painful force. Slim, in her mid-twenties, with a mass of auburn hair tumbling down to her shoulders, her resemblance to the young woman whose face had dominated his thoughts for so long was uncanny. Seeing her a second time was enough to confirm the assessment he had made the night before: she was ideal for his purposes.

  He leaned across and threw open his door. ‘Same terms then?’ he queried, playing along with her, even though, for what he had in mind, the price was irrelevant.

  ‘Told you before, depends what you want me to do,’ she retorted and, settling into the front passenger seat beside him, pulled the door closed after her. ‘I’ll do any trick you like long as you pays the goin’ rate.’

  Her cheap perfume filled the car, obliterating even the dank smell of the mist. He smiled thinly in the gloom as he engaged gear and pulled away. ‘Oh, I’m a very imaginative soul,’ he murmured. ‘I have no doubt that we can come up with something new this time.’

  She lit a cigarette without asking. ‘So where we going then? My flat again, is it?’

  He glanced across at her, briefly noting the long legs and pelmet for a skirt as they passed through a pool of light created by another street lamp and thinking of the pert breasts and milky-white skin he had caressed just twenty-four hours ago. ‘Not tonight,’ he replied. ‘There’s a little place near here I thought we’d try.’

  She shrugged. ‘OK by me,’ she said, ‘but remember that me basic’s fifty quid an hour – an’ the clock’s already tickin’.’

  ‘Judging by your performance last night, I’m sure you’ll be worth it,’ he acknowledged. ‘In fact, I know you will.’

  Highbridge was out for the count – nothing moving along the Bridgwater road, save the fuzzy headlights of a lone articulated lorry heading back the way they had come. He swung left into a narrow side-street, then sharp right into a cul-de-sac, pulling up in front of a pair of wooden gates.

  The girl peered past him through the driver’s window, her uneasiness palpable. ‘What is this place?’ she queried.

  He gave a short laugh and, climbing out of the car, went round to her door and jerked it open. ‘You’ll see in a minute,’ he said, flashing a torch in her eyes. ‘You coming?’

  She slid one shapely leg out of the car, then stopped short. ‘’Ere, that sign there says Funeral Directors. That’s undertakers, ain’t it?’

  He shrugged. ‘Used to be. Business folded a couple of years ago, though. Just somewhere to doss now.’

  She seemed unconvinced. ‘Don’t know about this,’ she said. ‘Place is kind of creepy. Why couldn’t we have stuck to my flat?’

  He sighed, his irritation showing. ‘You can always walk back to Bridgwater,’ he grated. ‘Your choice.’

  She pouted. Then, taking a deep breath, she stepped out of the car and, with obvious reluctance hobbled after him in her high-heels to the half-open double gates. Beyond, lay a concrete yard littered with rubbish. At the far end a long two-storey building, flanked on one side by what looked like a massive garage with steel doors, peered at them through the gloom.

  She shivered as he prodded her forward with his torch, the beam then cutting a path ahead of them through the mist as he guided her across the yard by one elbow. ‘What a crap-hole,’ she breathed, lowering her voice. ‘Gives me the jitters.’

  He said nothing, but firmly steered her towards a door with a frosted glass pane. She heard the rattle of keys and waited while he reached past her to unlock it. ‘Electric’s off, I’m afraid,’ he explained before ushering her through, then gave another short laugh. ‘Still, maybe you’d prefer it in the dark this time, eh?’

  A long hallway opened up before the beam of his torch. It was cold and smelled of damp and decay. She shivered again, suddenly wishing she was back on the streets of Bridgwater.

  ‘In here,’ he said, pushing open a pair of doors on their left.

  Weak yellow light filtered into the hallway from the room inside, ghostly and uninviting. Once again she hesitated, a voice in her brain urging her not to go any further. But it was already too late, for he was now right behind her, firmly nudging her forward. The next instant she was over the threshold – and into a macabre ghoulish scene that might have been devised by the director of a Hollywood horror film.

  The room was small and thickly carpeted, illuminated solely by flickering candlelight. A long table, covered by a cloth, stood in the centre, the tall candles in the multi-stemmed candelabra that lined each side licking at the rippling shadows pressing in on them with hungry smoky tongues.

  It was not the table or the candles that held her startled gaze, however, rooting her to the spot with a kind of horrible fascination and starting the worm of fear crawling around inside her, but something that stood on the table between the candles.

  The open wooden coffin was empty – she could see that much even in the gloom – its lid resting against a corner of the table, the brass handles glinting in the candlelight like slitted yellow eyes and its gaping maw grinning at her with cold mirth.

  ‘’Ere, what is this?’ she demanded, her voice sounding strained and unnatural as she jerked round to face him.

  ‘The old chapel of rest,’ he replied. ‘Now, take off your clothes.’

  ‘What, in ’ere?’ she exclaimed. ‘You got to be jokin’.’

  He smiled. ‘You said you would do any trick,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Yeah, but not with that thing leerin’ at me?’ she said, nodding towards the coffin. ‘What’s it doin’ ’ere anyway? You said noffin’ about coffins.’

  Twister kicked the door shut with the heel of his shoe and treated her to another smile. ‘Why, it’s for you, my dear,’ he replied, ‘just for you!’

  And it was at that terrible moment that she knew she was dead.

  chapter 2

  BLUE LIGHTS PULSING in the winter murk, their intensity dimmed by a thickening mist, the metallic clatter of police in-car radios punctuating the still night air in sharp bursts of unintelligible conversation and a tiny knot of local residents, mostly still in their night clothes, gathered in the street nearby like inquisitive ghosts, bathed in the fuzzy light streaming from their homes.

  Real life drama had come to Highbridge and it seemed to have drawn on the entire resources of the local police.

  Two marked police patrol cars and several plain vehicles were drawn up untidily across the wide open gates accessing the rear yard of the building that occupied the corner of the cul-de-sac, a lone uniformed constable standing a little uncertainly in the opening, as if awaiting instructions, while behind the windows of the derelict property torches probed the shadows like mini searchlights.

  Detective Inspector Ted Roscoe scowled and set his familiar pork pie hat more firmly on his bullet-shaped head before slipping a piece of chewing gum into his mouth. Called out in the middle of a late-night
poker session from the back room of his local, he was far from happy about things, especially as he seemed to have copped a real bummer of a job this time.

  The young woman lying in the open coffin seemed to have been specially prepared for viewing; her auburn hair combed back from her face and spread out carefully on the pillow, her hands crossed demurely over her breasts and the distinctive sleeveless, padded jacket, white shirt and black trousers arranged like the clothes on a shop mannequin. The flickering lights of the candles placed on either side of the coffin lent an unnatural surreal quality to the scene, casting sinister moving shadows up and down the walls and across the ceiling, imbuing the corpse with a new vitality – as if, like one of Dracula’s undead, the eyes were about to pop open and the slender hands grip the sides of the coffin to raise itself up.

  Roscoe’s feet fidgeted uneasily in his blue plastic booties – which, like the rest of those present, he had been required to pull on over his suede shoes to protect the crime scene – paying little attention to the scenes-of-crime officers moving about the room in their white plastic overalls, like aliens from a Doctor Who episode, as they set up their cameras and lighting equipment.

  ‘Who found her?’ he snapped, apparently to anyone who happened to be listening.

  The uniformed constable relegated to the doorway of the chapel of rest cleared his throat. ‘Control got a call from some bloke saying he’d seen a man climbing over the wall at the back, sir. When Robbie Jones and me attended, there was no sign of any intruder, but we found her like that.’

  Roscoe turned to face him. ‘And who was this “bloke”?’

  The constable shrugged. ‘Dunno, sir. Said his name was Ron Smith, but when Control checked the address he gave, it turned out to be duff.’

  ‘What about the phone number?’

  ‘Nicked mobile apparently – already listed in Property Index.’

  Roscoe thought about that for a moment or two, chewing furiously. ‘What the hell are we dealing with here?’ he said finally, as if someone else might have all the answers. ‘In case no one happens to have noticed, she’s wearing a bloody police uniform!’