Family Reunion

by Robert F Barker

  ‘So you made sure it wouldn’t happen again?’

  She nodded.

  What she must have gone through….

  ‘I waited until I found him working under a car. It was jacked up. I had to make sure he would either never walk again, or…. I knocked the jack away.’

  Carver shook his head and turned to look down on the dead face of the original Monster of Yerevan.

  Perhaps it was best this way. Even if he had spotted the date thing, realised that the Durzlans had been slaughtered several months after Vahrig Danelian’s arrest, not before - why does America always have to be different? - he still wasn’t sure they would have put it together. And if they had, so what? A horrendous trial. Her father put away, somewhere like Parkside. Lucy and her mother sent home maybe? Certainly they would be condemned to live the rest of their lives in shame and despair until one or both had had enough. At least this way Lucy would know she had saved her mother from more years of anguish.

  Lucy’s body racked and the long-held back sobs started to come. To Carver’s surprise, she stepped into him, and buried her face in his chest, the sobbing growing in intensity.

  At first he was unsure what to do. But eventually he gave in, and started rubbing his hand over her back, through the long, black hair.

  ‘It’s alright Lucy. Everything’ll be okay.’

  He knew it was stupid, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say. Looking up, he saw the horrified expression on Jess’s face and knew what he had to do, though he wished he didn’t. He nodded to her.

  ‘Call it in,’ he said.

  The End

  Addendum - Follows…

  Addendum

  It was the envelope’s unusual shape and size that first drew Carver’s eye. Smaller and more squarely-proportioned than most of those that landed in his in-tray, it marked it as something different to the rest of the dross. When he glimpsed its original addressing - handwritten and in block-capitals - “Detective James Carver, c/o Warrington Police Station, England, The United Kingdom,” - he pulled it from the pile. No mention of his rank, a police force or a post code pointed to someone unused to mailing UK police organisations, maybe even a foreign source. Similarly, the, “James” and out-of-date work location hinted at the sender being not close to him, personally. The original address had been crossed through and someone - he imagined the likes of Darren or Laoni in the Warrington Station mail room - had added the redirecting address that had brought it to him.

  Curiosity piqued, he turned it in his hands. The envelope’s gum seal was reinforced by several strips of clear tape. The sender had gone to some trouble to ensure it remained unopened until it reached its intended recipient. Grabbing scissors from the pot on his desk, he slit through the top, looked inside, then reached in and drew out the contents - a single colour photograph. Placing it on the desk, he stared down at it.

  The photograph showed two men and two women sitting around a table in a garden type setting. On first inspection there was nothing to yield any clue as to whereabouts in the world the picture had been taken. The waning sunlight and shadows hinted towards evening time. Almost immediately, thoughts about what enhancement may show up began to cross Carver’s mind.

  None of the party were looking to camera, suggesting the photograph may have been taken without their knowledge. One man had his back to the picture-taker, all-but screening the man opposite, apart from his left shoulder and arm. Likewise, the blond woman on the left of the shot was leaning forward over the table, so her face was also hidden. The woman to the right, however, was fully visible. Someone had drawn a ring around her in red ink, as if to make sure she wasn’t missed. It wasn’t needed.

  She was sitting back in her chair, smiling, as if at something the man to her left had said. She was holding aloft a glass of wine, about to take a sip. She was dressed elegantly - long black dress, sparkly-black heels, simple gold chain about her neck. Large sunglasses shielded a good part of her face. Her hair was styled in a shoulder length bob. It was dark, very dark. Carver thought it might even be black.

  He honed in on her smile.

  His heart skipped a beat, then several more.

  He turned the photograph over. On the back, in the same red ink as used to draw the circle, were the words, IT’S HER.

  It took Carver only a few short seconds to digest the several and diverse implications contained within the photograph and the brief message. As he did so, he felt his stomach dropping away, as if he had just crested the highest point on some fairground roller coaster and was heading down. At the same time, a shaking began in his hands and began radiating out through his limbs and into the rest of his body.

  _____________

  Coming Soon - DEATH IN MIND - The next in the DCI Jamie Carver Series

  How do you catch someone who kills through others, when the others don’t even know they’ve done it?

  A busy railway station. A young woman walks to the edge of the platform, waits, then steps out in front of the oncoming train.

  A lonely road at night. A man deliberately steers his car into a tree at speed.

  Tragic suicides, clearly. Or are they?

  When evidence shows that neither victim were contemplating suicide, DCI Jamie Carver faces a conundrum. Is it possible to programme someone into taking their own life? And if it is, then can they also be programmed to murder?

  These are the questions Carver must answer, and quickly, before more die. But how do you do that when the person you suspect is pulling the strings may also be pulling yours? And how do you stay safe when someone is targeting you for murder, and even they don’t know it?

  The next in the DCI Jamie Carver Series sees the detective charting new territory as he grapples with the possibility of ‘unconscious murder’ - and comes up against not just a killer whose methods are unique, but one who knows what the questions will be before they are even asked. Read on for a preview of the opening chapters of, Death In Mind.

  Death In Mind

  Chapter One

  Five minutes before she killed herself, Sarah Brooke had never had a suicidal thought in her life. In fact as she waited for her train home that evening the only thing on her mind apart from the cold, was what to do about dinner.

  Gary’s call saying he’d been dragged into an urgent meeting and may not be home until, ‘Ten, at the earliest,’ had blown her plans for a surprise three-year-anniversary supper. Both working for the same bank - she, Accounts, him Lending – the resurgent banking crisis was still playing havoc with their home life. The alternative supper option was yet another delve in the freezer for a ready-meal. And while it didn’t hold much appeal, the way her journey home was shaping up and the way she was beginning to feel, it was rapidly becoming the most likely.

  Turning her face to the screen above the platform, she read the latest update.

  The next train through Crewe Station’s Platform 3, due in four minutes, was the Glasgow to Euston Inter-City express. Her own, Stafford train, showed another three behind. Which would make it over a quarter of an hour late. The third such delay this week. And it was still only Thursday.

  As the chill wind that haunts railway halls in winter wafted down the platform, Sarah folded across the lapel of her Camel-wool coat and resolved to wear a thicker scarf tomorrow; maybe even the multi-coloured horror Gary had brought her last Christmas - part of a gift-set. With no sign of the late cold snap that had gripped the country the past week disappearing, style may just have to go on hold for a while. Better than bloody freezing.

  She thought about making her way back to the American-Style Coffee House the other end of the platform and grabbing a cappuccino. At least it would take her away from the annoying cacophony she’d been subjected to the last few minutes.

  When she’d first arrived at her usual waiting spot, three-quarters of the way down the platform, she didn’t give the middle-aged man in the full-length Crombie and quirky Fedora pulled low a second glance. But after a few minutes, as the
sound of some vaguely-familiar tune she couldn’t quite make out intruded more and more into her consciousness, she turned to see where it was coming from. She was mildly surprised when she saw the wires emerging from within the man’s coat’s depths and running up to disappear under the hat’s brim. For some reason, he didn’t strike her as the sort who would listen through earbuds, not unless they were Bose. But the way she and others close by were being forced to listen along, the ear-buds were definitely not Bose, not the way they were allowing the sound to leak to the annoyance of those around.

  Thinking of him again prompted her to glance over her shoulder, which was when she realised he was standing much closer than before, barely a metre away and still all-but hidden behind the newspaper he was holding up. The page facing showed a headline above a report with an accompanying photograph. Sarah paid it scant regard yet still gleaned it was something to do with a lighthouse; some dramatic rescue. For some reason the image it evoked, like the music, seemed strangely familiar.

  Deja-vu or what?

  For his part, the man in the hat seemed oblivious to the annoyance he was causing – especially to Sarah. The thought came as to what the thumping beat must be doing to his eardrums if she could hear it so clearly. It also made her wonder again what it was. It irked more than she knew it should, that she couldn’t place it.

  Thrusting her gloved hands deeper into her pockets, she decided. Though the cappuccino down the platform wasn’t up to much, it was preferable to having to listen to some weirdo’s idea of music.

  But as she made to turn to where the café’s leaded windows cast a spider’s web of yellow light across the platform, she was surprised to discover she was reluctant to tear herself away. It felt almost like she was in the grip of some compulsion by which she couldn’t leave until she had identified what the music was, where she had heard it before. The deep bass tones had a curiously affecting quality.

  And now there was something else.

  Though she couldn’t say why, her brain seemed to be making a connection between the music and the story she had glimpsed in the newspaper. The one about the lighthouse rescue. An image of a cheering light, growing brighter, came to her. A feeling like none she had felt before but seemed to be at least part apprehension, rose inside her.

  At that moment a voice, melodious and silky smooth, sounded close to her ear.

  ‘Make ready, Sarah. Your salvation draws near.’

  She knew at once it was him, though how, she couldn’t say. And there was something about the words that made her feel lethargic, like she had suddenly been drained of energy. More than that, they brought with them an overwhelming feeling of sadness.

  What’s happening to me, she thought?

  Close to that time of the month, Sarah’s first thought was she was about to experience one of her debilitating migraines. But as her vision stayed clear and the nauseous pain didn’t come, she dismissed it. This was something else. Confused and becoming just a little concerned, Sarah glanced behind.

  At first all she could see was the newspaper, still hiding his features. But then it began to lower, slowly. At the same time the head and hat behind lifted so that, bit-by-bit, a pair of eyes, dark and staring behind thick-framed glasses, appeared over the top to meet hers.

  Something happened.

  Chapter Two

  From the middle of the three oak benches to the left of the witness box, Detective Chief Inspector Jamie Carver tried not to think about the time-bomb that had just landed in his lap. It wasn’t easy. His mind kept flipping back to the challenging look in Jess’s face as they parted and the question it inevitably raised. How much did she know about Helen Flatterly? Then again, how much could she know? No more than him, surely? Thrusting it aside, he tried to focus on the here and now.

  To his left, the five men and seven women were filing back into their two rows of leather-backed seats. Though the last time they would be together, the order of seating was as it had been throughout. Beside him, in his Crown-Court-best blue-pin-stripe, Detective Superintendent Andy Gray, the man who had led Operation Golan from start to finish, leaned in to mutter a redundant, ‘Here we go.’

  Mind not yet where it should be, Carver managed only a nod.

  Their position next to the witness box was where Case Officers usually gather at the conclusion of proceedings before the City of Chester’s imposing Crown Court Number One. Carver had been there more times than he could remember, though few had felt so personal. From here he had an unobstructed view of the key players, Judge, both sets of Counsel, Jury and, most of all, The Accused. Directly facing across the other side of the court, the dock was some thirty metres away. Nevertheless, as Carver’s gaze settled on the burly figure waiting quietly, head down, he still caught the feint whiff of aniseed. Once thought to mark either an unfortunate choice of cologne or an over-fondness for some culinary staple of his homeland, it was now known to be simply a by-product of Kisic’s embarrassing but otherwise harmless hormonal condition.

  As he waited for things to settle, Carver let his gaze roam, drinking in the sights and sounds he looked forward to later recalling. Apart from anything, they marked the end to a difficult and sometimes dangerous operation.

  All things considered Carver thought, the trial had gone as well as they could have hoped, better even. Considering the case’s complexities, the credentials of some of the witnesses and the reputation of the man now waiting to hear how and where he may spend the rest of his life, there had been no shortage of predictions that it would never get this far. To Carver’s relief, they’d all been proved wrong. Even the evidence they had worried most about not getting in, such as the accused’s penchant for violence, had been laid before the men and women now settling into their seats for the final time. Carver’s experience told him, never take anything for granted. Deep down he thought things looked pretty good.

  That this was the case was in no-small-part due to the be-wigged figure in the purple robe now waiting for the Jury Foreman to signal they were ready so he could get on with wrapping things up. Gaunt to the point of cadaverousness, it was his Honour Judge Henry Willard who’d allowed Alike Mikolas’s damning evidence. A former Nigerian beauty queen and one of Jadranko Kisic’s many ex-lovers, she’d been present during the lead-up to Bernie Grucott’s brutal slaying. Her account threatened to leave in tatters the carefully worked-up alibi the defence had spent the best part of the past three weeks drip-feeding the Jury. The Judges’ decision triggered uproar in the Kisic camp.

  Like a row of jack-in-the-boxes, his legal team had jumped to their feet, appealing, loudly, for a recess so they could take, ‘Instructions.’ By then as fed up with the defence’s convoluted shenanigans as everyone, the Judge refused.

  On witnessing the disarray that followed, Carver couldn’t help indulge a moment of weakness. Usually scrupulous about staying professional in sight of the jury, he let the smile that crept into his face linger enough so Kisic would see, though it wasn’t really necessary. By then the Croatian knew it was Carver who had traced Alike Mikolas back to Lagos where Kisic had assumed, wrongly, she would be beyond the reach of Golan’s investigators. And as soon as Kisic saw the smile, Carver wiped it. In the event things weren’t as cut and dried as everyone thought, he didn’t want the Jury to think he was cock-sure. Rock-solid trials had been lost for less.

  And on top of Alike’s evidence of course, there’d been His Honour’s summing-up.

  The law demands that the Judge’s closing statement be impartial, confined to matters already put before the jury. But it is the Judge’s prerogative which parts of the evidence to take his time over, as well as when and where to introduce a meaning-laden, ‘Hmmph.’ Long critical of the jury system, Carver was nevertheless glad that the tradition of the Judge’s Summing-Up had resisted calls for its abandonment. Had any of the jurors been harbouring doubts, it was clear enough which side of the fence Henry Willard thought they should lean.

  Now, as the Judge and the retired-banker-
type Foreman exchanged bows – the signal for everyone to sit – Carver hid another smile. He’d seen the look that passed between the young man behind the foreman’s left shoulder and the somewhat older woman to his right.

  Lengthy trials impact on Jurors’ private lives in unexpected ways. Most often they take the form of changing attitudes towards, the Law, ‘Crazy’: the Courts, ‘Can’t believe the amount of time and money that’s wasted’ and, occasionally, the Police, ‘Sincere, but woeful’. But sometimes the enforced confinement affects people in other ways. Having witnessed the pair’s body language change over the past few weeks - she was old enough to be his mother - Carver suspected that today would not be the last time they would be together, even if the Judge did discharge them, their civic duty done. It wasn’t even that rare. Carver’s ex-sister-in-law and her husband had met on Jury Service.

  As the Judge leaned forward to check some point of procedure with his clerk, Carver turned his full attention on the man now staring across at him.

  Jadranko Kisic’s beefy arms were folded across his body-builder frame; the face that bore marks of conflicts never reported to the police, impassive as ever. The impression,- as no doubt intended, was of a rough-but-equable sort. Someone whose confidence in the system of justice about to determine how he may spend the rest of his life remained undimmed. A man who, having done nothing wrong, had nothing to fear, certain that the protestations of innocence he had maintained throughout would soon be vindicated.

  It was the image Kisic had made a point of presenting to the court the past five weeks.

  It was also the one Carver wasn’t alone in recognising as a sham. For though the Croatian-born Crime-Master was known to have several sides to his character, none could be described as ‘equable’. In fact any attempt to classify Kisic’s various personality traits would more likely make use of words such as manic, obsessive, and psychotic. Several times during the past weeks, Carver had found himself wondering what cocktail of suppressants his resourceful legal team had managed to get some tame GP to prescribe.