Detective Amanda Lacey Box Set

by Linda Coles

  There was movement at the window, a curtain then a face, briefly.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said, and lifted his jacket up over his head before stepping out into the pelting rain. He dashed up the front path and knocked, grateful there was an overhang to shelter him. He ruffled his hair back into shape and put a weak smile on his face ready to greet her. The door opened, and Sam stood there, a smile on her own face, looking as normal as ever.

  “Hi, Rick. Come on in out of the rain,” she said cheerily.

  He was noting everything she said, every miniscule movement she made, and adding it to the imaginary notepad in his head.

  “Thanks. It wasn’t even raining when I set off.”

  “Want a cuppa? I’m just making one.”

  “Please, thanks.” Why hasn’t she asked immediately why I’m here? he wondered. I’ve never been here without Rick unless I’m picking him up. He added this to his mental checklist.

  He followed her through to the kitchen. The place looked spic and span; nothing, it seemed, was out of place. He watched from behind as she put tea bags in two mugs and reached for a packet of biscuits. Still no question as to the reason for his visit. Finally, the tea was ready and they sat down at the kitchen table. Rain pelted the window outside. The wind had picked up, adding to a wild day.

  Finally, she asked.

  “So, to what do I owe this unexpected visit? Duncan is down in Kent somewhere.”

  He watched her sip her tea, looking over the rim of the mug at him. “Well, that’s why I’m here Sam. I have some news. There’s no easy way to tell you, but I’m afraid Duncan has been shot and is in hospital in Croydon.”

  He waited, handing the floor over to Sam to make the performance of her life. And make it convincing – to them both.

  “What?! How bad is he?” she asked, shocked. Her mouth hung open.

  “He’s doing okay. They operated earlier this morning. He was shot in the shoulder, but he was lying on his hand so the bullet went straight through and into his hand. He’ll need more surgery to get his hand working properly again, and he lost a lot of blood, but other than that he’s a lucky man. He’ll live.” He waited for a twitch, a tell, something at the deliberate words ‘he’ll live.’

  Sam took a deep breath in and out, which could have meant anything, but other than that, there was nothing obvious.

  “I need to see him. Let me organize the girls overnight, and I’ll grab a few things and head down.” She looked at the clock, and Duncan waited while she made some calculations before speaking.

  “They will be transferring him up to Manchester as soon as they can, but I don’t know when that will be. It’s maybe worth a call to the hospital before you dash down there.”

  “Yes – good idea.”

  She sat silently and Duncan again watched, wondering what was actually going on inside her head. Would a loving, caring wife with a husband in hospital a good four hours away really wait, or would she dash off no matter what? Noted again. He sipped his tea and took a biscuit, more for something to do in the strange atmosphere than anything else. Rick was eager to learn as much as he could, and as with any suspect (if she was one), he was prepared to let her talk and ramble on; that’s generally where they slipped up. Too much detail equalled a set-up alibi; too little was clever and cagey but didn’t necessarily mean guilty. It only meant smart.

  When Sam spoke again, it wasn’t quite what he expected to hear.

  “Right, then. Well, thanks for coming round and telling me. I really appreciate it. I’ll give them a ring and see what’s what.” She managed a smile – a weak one, but a smile nonetheless.

  Rick stood to leave, adding her last comment to his imaginary notepad along with a couple of other observations: no tears, no pain, not much shock and not a great deal of concern about seeing him any time soon. As far as Rick was concerned, there was more digging to be done before Sam was completely eliminated as a suspect. And that disappointed him immensely. She was not the woman he’d thought she was.

  Chapter Seventy

  “I’m assuming that’s us done as hit men?” Clinton enquired as they both sat in Luke’s tiny room, Clinton in the chair, Luke on the bed. They’d got home in the early hours after leaving Croydon in a rush around 1 a.m. It was safe to say their little foray into being killing machines hadn’t gone so well; Luke’s bottling it at the last minute had been awkward. Clinton would never have been able to take over if Luke hadn’t found his balls in time before the target had woken up; thankfully the strength had found him somehow.

  Or the stupidity. Or the sheer dumb luck, depending on your view.

  As it was, they were forced to dissect what had gone wrong and how it might affect them from today onwards. And was the guy even dead? Clinton seemed to think so, Luke thought; otherwise he wouldn’t be talking like he was. Luke had not yet voiced that concern. He sat silent, listening as Clinton went over the details.

  “There shouldn’t be any footage of us. There weren’t any cameras in the corridor – of that I’m sure – and we both kept our heads well down, hoodies up, so there’d have been nothing to be seen even if there had been a camera. It would simply show two figures, hoods up, caps on, heads down. No one saw us enter or leave or nick the master key card.

  “And the beauty of a hotel such as that one is the transient clientele, passing through for a night on business,” Clinton went on. “They’ll all have gone back to where they spend their days and nights now, no one the wiser. I bet most of them spend the evening catching up on work, have a drink or two then watch a porn movie before an early night.”

  Luke marvelled at how calm and reconciled he sounded and wished he felt the same. He wished he knew whether their target was still alive or not. He sat quietly on the bed, giving the odd grunt to show he was listening and agreeing. There was no point mentioning his concern until he knew for sure.

  The guy’s body must have been discovered by now, though surely? A quick look online hadn’t returned any reports of either. Gunshot wounds would be newsworthy either way, Luke knew, so he could only take from that the body – if there was one – was still to be discovered.

  He looked at his bedside clock. It was just coming up to noon, which meant housekeeping would find the guy any minute if someone else hadn’t in the last hour or so. Word would soon be out – and he hoped it was the right word.

  He rubbed his eyes with the heels of both hands and tried to clear his head, to push the stress out of his brain and think about something else. But how could he when he had no clue what the problem was going to be? Attempted murder or murder – both held hefty sentences. The only difference was that with murder, the victim couldn’t give evidence.

  But a target who was still breathing could.

  Luke got to his feet. “I need to sleep. Why don’t we meet up again later? I can’t think straight right now.” He rubbed his eyes again and yawned dramatically, more for effect so Clinton would leave.

  “Me too. I’m wasted,” Clinton declared. “Okay, I’ll be off, then. Come round to mine later? The parents will be at bingo so we can talk uninterrupted for a couple of hours.”

  “Yeah, great. Let’s do that.”

  Luke got up to show his friend out, not that he didn’t know the way. It was manners, the thing to do. He stood watching from the front window as Clinton disappeared from view, then retrieved his laptop, went back up to the sanctuary of his room and logged back on to the website. There was a message waiting for him. A surge of dread ripped through him. He hoped it wasn’t a new enquiry; his days of being a hit for hire were over. He’d frozen when the time had come, and that had been dangerous. He couldn’t risk that happening again, and more to the point, he didn’t want the stress that went with the job, money or not. Whoever this was, he was no longer open for business.

  But wasn’t a new enquiry – it was an angry customer.

  Nausea washed over him, replacing the dread. The words were clear:

  You fucked up.
He’s still alive. Get it sorted.

  Head in his hands, Luke wasn’t sure how or if to respond. He’d received the money and he wasn’t about to give it back, but he was – they were – counting on the second payment. Six thousand pounds wasn’t to be sniffed at. It was a tidy sum of money and the whole reason they’d started the damn venture. He groaned to himself, wondering what the hell he was going to do now – loose ends, an angry customer and his own lost nerve wasn’t a helpful mix. His fingers hovered over the message to hit reply, but his head was pulling him back. If he said the job would be finished, how was he going to do that exactly? If he apologized? Well, that wouldn’t likely fly in a situation like this. Or he could ignore it, keep the first payment and leave it at that – they were still £5000 to the good. There was no way the customer could find out who they were and hunt them down, just as he had no idea who the customer was. Nor had he any desire to know, so in that respect they were safe.

  His fingers still hovered. He had to do something, make a decision, and deal with it, and even if the decision was not to reply, that was still a decision. Luke’s room was deathly quiet as he sat on his bed, digging deep for his gut instinct, because in this case, that’s all he had. In a tricky business decision, Clinton would force him to go by the data, the numbers, read what they were telling him and go with that, because without data, it was merely an opinion, he’d say. Well, in the absence of data, gut opinion was all he had now.

  The answer seemed obvious now: ignore the message. And delete the site before anything could be traced to him. And on the upside, in the unlikely event that he ventured into the dark web again, he now knew how to build a shop window.

  So that’s exactly what he did. When he was satisfied the files had been deleted he sat back and sighed, pleased with his decision. With the website now gone, there was no means for any angry customer to reach him.

  He was out of the hit-for-hire business – for good.

  Chapter Seventy-One

  Sam felt like she’d been the one shot in the chest, not Duncan, and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. Who knew disappointment could be so painful. She’d been ready for the knock at the door, been ready for one of Duncan’s colleagues to deliver the news, but not like this, not this news. She’d practiced her reaction in the bathroom mirror, acting it out over and over again, not wanting to overdo it but still be the shocked and distraught wife, overcome with grief at news of the death of her soul mate. What she hadn’t practiced for was the news that he’d been badly injured and was still alive in Croydon. She wondered now if she’d passed the test, pulled it off after all – in the end, her shock had been real, not acted.

  Rick had only been gone five minutes and still she stood in the hallway, frozen to the spot, thinking. What happens next? she wondered. This was not going to plan so far – she should be spending the day being consoled at his death, perhaps even thinking about funeral arrangements, drinking sweet tea or sipping brandy.

  She took a deep breath in, then let it stream out slowly through her nose, like a toke of cannabis, only not as relaxing. Inside she was revving up, anger starting to boil in the pit of her stomach. What could have gone wrong? And the money! Six thousand pounds gone to waste. Well, they’d have to give her a refund, wouldn’t they?

  “Good luck with that,” said a mocking voice in her head.

  Deciding she needed a drink to settle her down, she paced rapid steps to the kitchen, flung open the freezer section of the refrigerator, and grabbed a cold bottle of vodka she kept there. Not even bothering with a glass, she unscrewed the top and tipped the bottle into her mouth, taking a couple of large gulps. The icy liquid burned the back of her throat but it felt good, numbing her from the inside in an instant. Gasping, she caught her breath again then repeated it, clear liquid escaping from both corners of her mouth as she gulped greedily, trying to anaesthetize something inside her, screwing her eyes up against the pain of the freezing cold liquid.

  When she was done, she stood motionless in the room. There was not a sound coming from anywhere or anyone, and for a moment she felt totally alone in the world. Tears sprang to her eyes without warning, her mouth contorting as she stood and sobbed, letting them flow. She heard herself wail in pain – pain that Duncan was still alive, and not because he lay injured in hospital after being shot.

  Suddenly she stopped in mid-sob as the realization struck her that there’d be an investigation, and a large-scale one at that. Everyone knew that when an officer got hurt or killed, the police would leave no stone unturned to bring the culprit to justice, send the full force of the law slamming down on them.

  And that could be her.

  She needed to think, to work out what to do next, but there was a bigger pull – the pills in the side pocket of her bag. Her head swam; the vodka she’d gulped was swimming alone in her empty stomach, making her woozy. Grimly, she fought for control of her fluid mind.

  “Sit down, Sam,” she told herself sternly, “and think. Think what to do next.” But the lovely white pills filled her vision, egging her on to take just a couple, to blot out all thoughts of Duncan, erase the memory of his face from her mind. They bobbed about tantalizingly, even when she closed her eyes to clear the vision. It was no use; she knew she’d succumb.

  She ran out into the hallway, grabbed her bag off the banister end and dived into the side pocket. She clutched a handful of pills and shoved them greedily into her mouth, not bothering to physically count them, desperate for the relief they would give her. Slowly, forcing herself to breathe evenly now, she walked back to her spot in the kitchen and filled a glass with water to wash them down properly. Yes, that was better, just knowing they were inside of her, that the soothing feeling would follow in a moment. But she needed to think; there were things she needed to do to keep herself away from any suspicion. She forced herself to think about what any other woman, a woman still in love with her husband, would do in such an instance.

  She’d call the hospital. Yes – I need to call the hospital.

  She scrambled for her phone, her hands shaking with booze and nervous energy, and Googled the hospital in Croydon. She punched the number in and asked to be put through to Duncan Riley’s room. After a few rings, a nurse answered and told her he was doing okay under the circumstances but was groggy from the painkillers. They expected to move him to a ward later today, she said, all being well.

  Sam thanked her, making sure the nurse knew she’d called, and checked the task off in her head. What next? What would she do next?

  Ring a friend, tell her the bad news. Right.

  Anika answered after a couple of beats and Sam told her the news.

  “I’m on my way – you shouldn’t be on your own,” Anika said, alarmed.

  “No, I’m okay now I’ve got over the initial shock, and I’ll have to get the girls soon. I just wanted to let you know. Stay where you are, but thanks.”

  The last thing she wanted was Anika being a well-intentioned friend when there were things to be done – like get in touch with the man she’d organized to do the job in the first place. She needed a refund or the job finishing, not left dangling as it was. If Duncan lived, he’d find out about the loan and expenditure for sure, and that was something she’d have to address convincingly. Being married to a detective had its drawbacks.

  Her head was beginning to feel sleepy, and Sam regretted the tablets on top of the vodka. How many had she taken anyway?

  “I need food,” she said. She walked over to the toaster and slipped a couple of slices of bread in, not because she was hungry but to soak up the alcohol. While she waited for it to toast, she opened her laptop and found the relevant site. She posted a message for ‘him.’

  “You fucked up. He’s still alive. Get it sorted.”

  She hoped he’d see it soon and respond; she’d log on again in an hour or so. She wondered how he’d play it, what he’d do to make their contract right. All she could do now was wait until it was time to get the girls, then explain to them
what had happened.

  Tomorrow, she’d drive down to Croydon and play the dutiful wife – she’d better be convincing.

  Thoughts of the Cornish coast were slipping away . . .

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Back at the hotel and scene of the crime, Amanda was talking to the doctor on call, Faye Mitchell. She’d worked with Croydon for more than five years and was one of the best in the business. Never one to speculate before she had the facts to deal with, she often found herself at odds with detectives who wanted to get on with the job of detecting. But Dr. Mitchell could never be swayed – ever. Amanda stood waiting patiently in the doorway of the room Duncan had stayed in overnight, watching the last of the technicians finish their job. Faye raised her head and gave a brief smile, knowing what Amanda was thinking.

  “All in good time,” she quipped. A moment later, she stood from the spot on the floor where Duncan had fallen before being shot through the back of his shoulder.

  “Two bullets: one in the bed, one in the carpet. But you already know that. From point-blank range, too. He was damn lucky there wasn’t more damage to him than what he has. Any ideas your side who may have wanted him dead?”

  Amanda stepped further into the room. “We may have a rather loose person of interest, and if it pans out, it would be a sad state of affairs, I’m afraid.”