by Paul Gitsham
‘Sounds like a well-deserved break. And will you be going back up to Coventry to see your grandfather?’
Warren hid his surprise; he had no idea that Naseem had such a detailed knowledge of his family life.
‘Yes, he’s in a nursing home now, but he’ll be joining us at Susan’s parents for Christmas.’
‘Splendid,’ Naseem paused. ‘The West Midlands Police is a fine force,’ he said finally. ‘You spent the first part of your career there, I understand.’
‘Yes, about fifteen years,’ said Warren. Where was this going?
‘Plenty of prospects for an ambitious officer up there,’ said Naseem.
‘I suppose, I’ve not really looked,’ said Warren, a small, but prudent white lie.
Naseem nodded slowly. ‘Well, don’t be too hasty, should you spot anything interesting. Hertfordshire has plenty of scope for career advancement at the superintendent level; there are always resignations, retirements, that sort of thing,’ he paused. ‘Including some upcoming opportunities close to home.’
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Keep reading for an excerpt from A Price to Pay …
Prologue
The branches whipped at her face as she crashed through the trees. Her breath caught in her throat, her lungs labouring to keep up. Behind her, dogs barked and snarled, and she heard the shouts of her pursuers. The further into the woods she plunged, the darker it turned, the thickening canopy of leaves blocking ever more light.
A sudden burst of pain sent her sprawling to her knees, a fist in her mouth muffling her cries.
She couldn’t go on anymore.
She couldn’t.
Maybe if she turned around and went back they’d forgive her.
Maybe if she begged …
A shot rang out.
Going back wasn’t an option.
She’d just seen what they did to deserters.
She’d seen what they did to women like her.
She gritted her teeth, forcing herself back to her feet. She needed to continue her flight, putting as much distance as she could between her and the following men, before running was no longer possible.
She pushed on. The dogs were louder, and she shuddered at the memory of them. Huge, slavering things – she’d seen the way they attacked the dead rabbits thrown to them; chained up all day, they would be beside themselves at the prospect of a real, live prey to chase down.
The road was only a few hundred metres away; a busy, two-lane highway, the hiss of traffic was audible even at this time of night. There’s no way her pursuers would risk chasing her onto it.
She stumbled again, her foot sinking into a depression in the soft earth. She tried to get up, she really did, but she was exhausted.
What had she been thinking? Nobody ever escaped. Those who tried were dragged back and used as an example to everyone else.
Another shot cracked the night sky open.
It was closer than the last, and the dogs were even louder.
The extra surge of adrenalin was enough to spur her on.
But her pace was now little more than a brisk walk.
It was the best she could do.
The sound of the road, the sound of freedom was getting louder, but the sound of the dogs was getting louder more quickly.
Another unseen obstacle, and she ended up flat on her face.
What was the point? Everything that she loved in the world was now gone. She rolled onto her back, too exhausted to care about the blood trickling down her face from her broken nose. She felt her eyes close. Just a few seconds’ rest …
This time the shot was so close, she heard the leaves above her rustle.
No! She wouldn’t give in. Too much had already been sacrificed. If she gave up, if she died here, those sacrifices would have been in vain, and the memory of his selfless love would die with her.
Clambering back to her knees, she half crawled, half walked, towards the road.
This time when the pain came, there was no ignoring it.
‘No, no, no,’ she whimpered. Not now. Just a few minutes more.
Behind her, she heard the baying and snapping of the dogs and the shout of their handlers.
It was over. The dogs would be on her in seconds. There was no way she could keep ahead of them now. Sinking into the soil, she prayed to a god who seemed to have been deaf to her pleas for as long as she could remember.
Please make it quick.
She fell to her side, welcoming the encroaching darkness, looking forward to the release from suffering.
Suddenly, bright, dazzling beams of lights cut through the trees, turning night into day wherever their dancing cones landed. Overhead the night was shattered by a loud clattering. Now she could hear the handlers shouting, calling back their snarling charges.
But she was too far gone to care, wave after wave of pain passing through her, until eventually the darkened forest turned pitch black and she remembered nothing more.
Monday 2 November
Chapter 1
It had been a fairly quiet few weeks. Some might even say boring. DCI Warren Jones felt his head start to dip and he dug his nails into the palms of his hands. Nodding off in the middle of a budget meeting before they even got to the coloured printouts of this year’s projections would be rude, especially in a room full of his peers, some of whom seemed to regard it as the most exciting event in their calendar.
There weren’t even any decent biscuits.
What he wouldn’t give for some real policing right now. A good, meaty case he could get his teeth into, with leads to chase down and suspects to grill.
The current speaker switched slides. A quick look at the graph with its downward trends told Warren everything he needed to know. Fewer front-line officers, less money to pay for outsourced forensics services, and another cull of support staff. It didn’t seem as though the cuts extended to turning the heating down in the briefing rooms, although it was a mystery to him why this even required a meeting; an email would have sufficed.
Warren resisted the urge to look at his phone sitting face down on the desk in front of him. He hated when people did that; it was the height of bad manners.
On the opposite side of the room, the door opened, and a middle-aged man with a name badge on a Hertfordshire Police lanyard came in. Apologizing to the speaker, he scuttled around the table. Warren saw glimmers of disappointment on the faces of his colleagues as the support worker passed them by. He felt a surge of much-needed adrenalin as it soon became apparent that the man was heading for him.
‘Lucky bugger,’ muttered the DSI sitting next to him.
The man leaned down and spoke quietly into Warren’s ear.
Hiding a smile of relief, Warren apologized to the rest of the attendees and made his way to the door. Clearly, somebody upstairs had been listening to his silent pleas.
Be careful what you wish for.
The crime scene was already surrounded by a cordon when Warren arrived. An ambulance, lights off, sat silently. Two paramedics sat on the back step of the parked vehicle, keeping the chill, November air at bay with a Thermos of coffee. Their patient was well beyond anything they could do.
Parking up, Warren signed the scene log and fetched his murder bag from the boot. He would wait until the last minute before putting on his paper Teletubby suit, gloves, booties, hairnet and facemask. Even at this time of the year it would get uncomfortably sweaty very quickly.
Already there were swarms of white-suited crime scene investigators going about their business. He wondered if they ever got used to the protective gear, or if they just learned to put up with it.
The smell of tobacco smoke was accompanied by the sound of rustling. Warren turned to see Detective Sergeant Shaun Grimshaw heading his way. The man’s paper suit was folded down, so that
only his legs were covered. He carefully stubbed out his cigarette on the edge of his packet, before placing it inside the box.
At least he wasn’t contaminating the crime scene, thought Warren, though to be fair, they were still well outside the police tape.
‘I take it you’ve been in already?’
Grimshaw nodded. ‘Yeah, it’s a bloodbath.’ He motioned toward the paramedics. ‘Nowt for them to do, that’s for sure.’
‘Talk me through it before I go in and see for myself.’
Grimshaw turned and pointed down the street. ‘The victim’s in the rear ground-floor room of the massage parlour. According to the girls who were working, it’s one of the clients. A white male, mid-twenties I’d say. He was on his back, relaxing after a full-body massage. The girl servicing him said she’d popped out of the room to let him chill out for a bit and was fetching fresh towels for the next client, when she heard a scream.’
‘What do you mean, “servicing him”? Are we talking sex work?’
Grimshaw shrugged. ‘Supposedly it’s not that type of place, but who knows? I’ve seen the two girls working here, and they’re above the local average, if you get my drift.’
Warren let the insinuation slide; he’d speak to the Sexual Exploitation Unit later, and see if they had any intelligence on the establishment.
‘Then what?’
‘The girl …’ he looked at his notebook ‘Biljana Dragić, raced back in and she reckons there was somebody in a black hoodie removing a knife from the middle of the victim’s chest. She said the window was open, and he climbed out, ran across the yard and through their back gate. She didn’t see his face.
‘She called for help and tried to stop the bleeding with towels. Another girl, Malina Dragić, heard her, came in and tried to help her, but they reckon he was already dead.’
‘The same surname and it sounds Eastern European. Are they related?’
‘Sisters, and they are Serbian nationals. With work visas. They were very keen for me to know that.’
‘Where does the back gate lead to?’
‘There’s an alleyway. He could have gone either direction, towards the high street or into the estate behind. Jorge’s already down there with a team of uniforms looking for witnesses.’
‘It’s the middle of the afternoon on a Monday. There should have been someone around,’ said Warren. ‘Presumably the killer was covered in blood, and you say he took the knife with him?’
‘Yeah, the girls reckon he pulled it out. There are bloody smears on the window where he escaped.’
‘Then either he’s run away covered in blood, he’s stopped to take his clothes off and ditched them, or he got changed. Get a team out looking for the knife and any discarded clothes.’
‘Will do.’
‘Whilst you’re at it, get Mags Richardson to start collecting CCTV and licence plate numbers. If he didn’t escape on foot, he might have used a vehicle.’
‘It’s a slightly dodgy area; Jorge reckons some of the houses might have security cameras out the front, so he’s got his team looking for that as well. There’s CCTV in the reception area and out the back, but none in the actual massage rooms. I guess you don’t want that sort of thing on camera.’
Again, Warren ignored the implication.
‘How many staff and clients were on the premises at the time?’
‘There were no other clients at the time of the murder – it’s pretty quiet this time of the week. There were just the two masseuses.’
‘What about the owner?’
‘She’s on her way.’ He looked at his watch. ‘She’ll be here any minute now, I reckon, in this traffic.’
‘I want to speak to the masseuses when Forensics have finished with them.’
‘You might need a translator. Their English is pretty basic.’
‘Get one organized. Do we know who the victim is?’
‘Just a first name, “Stevie”, and a mobile number. They’re pretty old school; they use a paper diary to book in clients.’
‘Bag the diary as evidence. Send the mobile number back to Rachel Pymm and see if she can do anything with it. Who’s the crime scene manager?’
‘Andy Harrison.’
Warren nodded his approval. So far, everything had been done by the book.
‘Good work, Shaun. I’ll go and take a look.’
The rather grandiosely titled Middlesbury Massage and Relaxation Centre was a converted detached house, similar to dozens of small business across the town. The small garden at the front had been tarmacked over to create enough space for two medium-sized cars, whilst the large bay windows had been covered in signage advertising the services offered within, and products customers could buy to supposedly re-create the experience at home.
Warren stepped carefully onto the metal boards laid down by the CSIs to preserve any trace evidence such as footprints in the entranceway.
Inside, the wall between the entrance hall and what would originally have been a spacious front sitting room, had been knocked through to make a large reception-cum-waiting area with a desk, computer, till point and several comfy chairs. Towards the back were two small tables, each with a comfortable-looking recliner and a more practical work chair. Judging by the bottles of nail varnish and acetone on the tables, this was where the manicures and pedicures took place. Even through his mask, Warren’s nose was assaulted by a heady mix of different scented oils.
Standing in the hallway beyond, Warren recognised the portly form of CSM Andy Harrison talking to another white-suited technician. The veteran CSI broke off when he saw Warren enter.
‘Come in, DCI Jones. We’ll have to forgo the kiss on both cheeks and the handshake; we don’t want to contaminate the scene.’
The longer Warren knew the man, the stranger his sense of humour became; he supposed it was a natural response to the things the man dealt with every day.
‘The victim is in the back room. We’ve finished the preliminaries and we’re waiting for the pathologist to come and take a look.’
‘What’s the layout of the rest of the property?’
Harrison pointed towards the rear.
‘These old houses had galley kitchens leading through to an outside toilet and coal shed. When they converted this one from residential to commercial, they made use of the existing plumbing and kept a small sink and kitchenette for staff use. The old out-buildings now house a washing machine and a tumble dryer; it looks as though they wash their towels and uniforms on site.’ He rotated on the spot. ‘Upstairs, the front bedroom is also kitted out as a massage suite, the original bathroom has been split in two and turned into male and female toilets, and the small bedroom has been turned into a store cupboard. It appears that the staff also keep their personal belongings in there and use it to get changed.’
Warren followed him through; Grimshaw hadn’t been exaggerating, it really was a bloodbath. Here, even the scented candles, still guttering in the wind from the open window, were unable to mask the cloying smell of fresh blood.
The victim was a young man, probably in his twenties. White, with dark hair, he lay on his back, his body nude from the waist up, revealing a bulky torso that suggested hard work rather than hours spent in the gym. A gash to the left of his chest had leaked enough blood to obscure the tattoos that crossed his pectoral muscles and shoulder.
The attack had clearly been very quick. The victim’s blood-covered hands indicated that he had made some attempt to cover the wound.
‘The pathologist will confirm, obviously, but I’d say the knife was quite large and it penetrated at least one of the chambers of his heart. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was given a twist on the way out.’
Warren tore his eyes away from the wound to focus on the victim’s face. The man’s eyes were open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, his mouth open in surprise. The blood loss had left his skin waxy in appearance, making the two or three days’ stubble on his cheeks and chin stand out even more.
‘The witnesses said that the killer escaped through the window,’ said Warren. Even from his vantage point on the opposite side of the room, he could see bloody marks on the window frame.
‘That’s what it looks like at the moment, although we’ve not lifted any prints. I’d say the killer was wearing gloves. We’ll look in more detail when the body’s been removed, and we can move around more easily.’
Warren pointed to a number of evidence bags sitting on a chair in the corner.
‘Are those his personal belongings?’
‘Looks that way. The larger bags contain clothing. Blue jeans with leather belt, a black T-shirt with some rock band I’ve never heard of, and a brown leather jacket. He kept his socks, shoes and underwear on. The smaller bags contain his wallet, keys and mobile phone, which were in the inside-left pocket of his jacket.’
‘We need to identify him, so I’ll sign for those and leave the clothes with you.’
Warren collected the bags, before taking another look around the room.
His first impressions were that the murder had happened exactly as Grimshaw had stated. The killer came in through the window, stabbed the victim as he lay helpless on the massage bed, before taking the knife with him, leaving through the window.
He looked again at the victim’s wide-staring eyes and his surprised expression.
Something wasn’t right about the scene, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
Back outside in the fresh air, Warren wasted no time taking off his paper scene suit. Early evening and it was already dark. He handed the evidence bags over to Shaun Grimshaw whilst he undressed.
‘We need to identify the victim. Take a look in his wallet and see if you can find a name. The bus service around here is crap, so he may have parked up nearby. Use the key fob to check the cars nearby; we might be able to identify him that way. Bag his phone and ask IT if they can unlock it. This doesn’t look like a random killing, so I want to know who he’s been in contact with.’
