The DCI Yorke Series Boxset

by Wes Markin

  For H & B

  00:30

  WITH A TUMBLER of whisky in one hand, and a photograph of his dead sister in the other, he stared across the living room at the locked drawer he hid from the world.

  He sighed, leaned back on the sofa and let the spirit burn his throat.

  He took another look at the sister he’d so admired as a child, noticing the lines around her eyes which would now never deepen, and the dark hair that would never grey. He remembered his failed promise to her, and then thought of her killer walking free.

  After replacing her photograph in the drawer with other memorabilia of his personal failings, including a faded photograph of Charlotte, his first love, he locked it and buried the key behind the clock on his mantelpiece.

  Despite ending his furtive ritual, Yorke still flinched when he heard his bedroom door open. He turned to acknowledge Patricia, his girlfriend of nearly three years now, standing there in a white-cotton nightie. They exchanged a smile, and as he opened his mouth to reassure her that he was on his way back to her, the mobile phone in his dressing-gown pocket rang.

  As he took the call, and listened to the unthinkable, he stared at Patricia. Even in this darkened hour, metres away, he knew she would see the horror in his eyes. She started across the room, knowing that when the call ended, she would need to be there for him.

  As he murmured his farewells, she embraced him.

  It was unusual for a man as experienced as DCI Michael Yorke to be so affected by evil, but when evil journeyed so close to home, as it had done tonight, no one was exempt.

  He sagged in Patricia’s arms.

  DS Jake Pettman stroked one of the dead pigeon’s broken wings. He then replaced the lid on the shoebox, finished his third bottle of Summer Lightning beer, and replaced the bird underneath the sink.

  It was the third such delivery in three years, and rather than contact the station immediately, as Jake had done on the previous two occasions, he’d decided to keep this one all to himself.

  Two days on from the delivery, and he was no closer to explaining his reasons behind doing this. Not that this was a problem. He was the only one who knew about it.

  After peering in at his sleeping wife, Sheila, who was currently snuggled up with their two-year-old son, Frank, he returned to the kitchen, and the letter which had accompanied the shoebox lying by the sink.

  Jakey … how does it feel to not be able to fly anymore?

  Love Lacey x

  His phone rang. Even before he answered it, he sensed he was going to hear something that was going to turn his entire world upside down and make a dead bird in a box the least of his worries.

  After taking the phone call, DI Emma Gardner wanted to cry. Instead, she went right into her daughter, Anabelle’s room, and held her close. The young girl woke and murmured something. Gardner felt momentarily reassured. She kissed her daughter on her head and laid her back down.

  She then took a deep breath, said goodbye to her husband, threw a handful of tic-tac’s into her mouth, and left, beginning what felt ominously like a journey to hell.

  When Yorke arrived at DS Iain Brooke’s large cottage, pushed back into the Salisbury Plains, he stepped from the car and was immediately confronted by Gardner.

  ‘Sir, I …’ She stopped and started to cry.

  Yorke reached out and held her cheek. He held it for a couple of seconds, made eye contact with her, and then embraced her.

  ‘Pathetic, I’m sorry,’ she said from his shoulder.

  ‘That’s ridiculous, Emma.’

  She stepped out of the embrace, rubbed tears away and said, ‘I’ll hold it together, sir.’

  ‘I know you will,’ Yorke said, reaching out to her cheek again. ‘That’s why this is yours.’

  She widened her swollen eyes.

  ‘There’s no one better to manage this one. It’s your incident room.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘No one better.’

  He turned to face the house. Gardner flanked him and Jake came up on the other side. He looked left and right at his two colleagues. Like him, neither were dressed appropriately for freezing weather. They had all left their homes with their minds reeling.

  In the November darkness, under stars that looked grey and sick, Yorke surveyed the cottage he’d frequented on several occasions before to enjoy dinner with DS Iain Brookes and his wife, Jessica. Tonight, sheltering death from the cold, it looked far from welcoming. In fact, the two glowing windows on either side of the front door looked like the eyes of a preying animal.

  1

  AFTER PC SEAN Tyler had scribbled their names into the logbook, Yorke tore open his sealed bag and slipped on his over-suit. From the second bag, he recovered some overshoes to cover his brogues.

  While passing some blue-and-yellow crime-scene tape, he heard the crunching of tic-tac’s from Gardner and felt the huge, reassuring hand of Jake, his closest friend, on the small of his back.

  He took a deep breath and checked, as he always did, the over-suit covered his neck. The heating was clearly turned up high in this cottage, but he regularly felt an unexplainable tingle of cold on his neck at scenes like this.

  The walls around him creaked as they fended off the winds racing over the plains. On any other night Jessica Brookes might have felt safe and protected from the world’s aggression. But the world is so often underestimated, and tonight that aggression had found its way in.

  Metres from the living room, he heard Scientific Support Officer Lance Reynolds’ camera snapping away. He looked at his watch. It was quarter-past one.

  You have no right to do whatever you’ve done here tonight, whoever you are. Yorke thought. No right at all.

  They turned into the living room and the metallic smell of blood overwhelmed them.

  Sprawled out on a sheepskin rug that was once cream, Jessica had spread huge wings of blood. She looked like a crimson angel frozen mid-flight. Her breasts had been covered already with a blood-stained plastic sheet, but there could be no dignity in a death like this. Patricia Wileman, the Divisional Surgeon as well as Yorke’s lover, clearly disagreed. Patricia had left Yorke’s house merely a minute before him, but she was already hard at work. He watched her examine the body, treating it like a piece of priceless artwork. It was surreal to think that merely hours before they’d been making love.

  She looked up at him. She had her mask on so she offered him a raised eyebrow – her only way of expressing support.

  Reynolds, nicknamed ‘the Elf’ due to his light feet and dexterity, was also diligently working. He manoeuvred around the clusters of SOCOs he controlled, darting in and out, wielding the camera like a machine sucking answers from its materials rather than just documenting them.

  Yorke felt Jake lift his hand from his back, and then start gagging beside him. He glanced up at the big man. ‘You need time?’

  ‘No, I’ll be fine.’

  He then glanced at Gardner to his other side and considered the same question. She stared ahead with unflinching eyes. Driven, after her wobble before outside. Driven, like him. Like he hoped they all would be in the time to come.

  They stopped a metre from the body, allowing Reynolds the space to weave.

  In a world of exploding camera flashes, you could be forgiven for thinking that Jessica’s eyes were opening and closing; that her lips were curling up and down into a huge smile; that she was desperate to throw off death’s old clothes and join in the investigative dance. The reality was that her eyes were half closed and her mouth was sloped at an unusual angle. He recognised Jessica behind her twisted expressions, but wished he didn’t. The kindly host who had welcomed him into her house for dinner with her family on more than one occasion.

  Patricia lifted Jessica’s purpling top lip and the flash of Reynold’s camera burnt the image of her clenched teeth into Yorke’s mind. His eyes fell to her plastic-shrouded chest again.

  ‘What’s happened to her?’

  Patricia looked at him again wi
th the same raised eyebrow. Warning or reassurance? Yorke wasn’t sure this time.

  ‘It is particularly bad,’ Patricia said, pulling the plastic sheet off.

  ‘Ah, Jesus,’ Jake said. He turned and left at pace.

  Jessica had been sliced open and her ribcage jerked apart. Her breasts flopped down against her side.

  Yorke sucked in air. He wanted to turn away too. Desperately. He forced himself to stare. He heard Gardner muttering beside him, but her words suddenly seemed incomprehensible.

  ‘Her heart has been taken,’ Patricia said.

  Rain clattered against the window.

  ‘And flesh has been removed from both of her thighs.’

  ‘Why?’ Gardner’s voice was clear now. An instinctive question, but a futile one.

  ‘I don’t know, but the pieces were large, five inches by two.’

  Yorke took several steps backwards as Patricia re-covered Jessica’s chest.

  ‘Emma, go and get some fresh air with Jake,’ he said.

  Gardner nodded. ‘Sir.’

  He watched her venture outside the house to the preferable onslaught of rain and wind.

  He took several steps back, trying to focus on what he knew.

  Someone had called this in anonymously at quarter-past twelve. They had the location of this call, but the telephone box had been outside of any CCTV coverage, so no visual. Some officers would already be picking up CCTV footage in the vicinity to see if they could get a view on the caller arriving and leaving the area.

  At least there were no more bodies in this house. DS Iain Brookes and Jessica had been divorced for over a year now and their twelve-year-old son was staying at his place tonight. Family Liaison Officer Bryan Kelly and two other officers had gone to break the news. Yorke rubbed his face with his gloved hands. A whirlwind was about to descend on their lives.

  A whirlwind that was familiar to Yorke.

  He followed the SOCOs with his eyes as they dusted for prints, resampled fibres, photographed and in some instances, sketched.

  Breaking his trance, he headed outside and surveyed the area again. The cottages here were flash and expensive. Jessica had been a partner in a lucrative accountancy firm. There was sufficient land between each one to ensure that an intruder could get to the house unseen if they came on foot. Neighbours were still close enough to be seen though, and some flocked to their gardens and porches. They shivered, not just because it was cold, but because death had invaded their neighbourhood. Door-to-door would start almost immediately and a Police Search Advisor would be joining the investigation. He bypassed Exhibits Officer Andrew Waites, a notoriously unapproachable man, swooping for a cigarette butt in the garden. Then, he stood with Jake and Gardner at the side of the incident van.

  ‘Okay, Emma, head back and get the incident room ready, please. And talk to Price. Ensure the press, who will be here any second no doubt, don’t get anything they don’t need yet.’

  She nodded, wiped away a tear and headed away.

  ‘Sorry, sir. I just lost it in there,’ Jake said.

  ‘Shut up. It was a normal reaction.’

  ‘I just, you know, saw Sheila’s face.’

  Yorke paused.

  ‘Selfish, I know. Poor Iain. Fuck.’

  ‘Not selfish – normal. It could be anyone. That’s the point. That’s why we will get whoever fucking did this.’

  ‘She’s back again. A year to the day,’ Jake said.

  Yorke considered, and raised an eyebrow. ‘Another bird?’

  ‘Another. Number three. Posted inside the UK again. Is it any wonder I saw Sheila’s face in there?’

  ‘It’s not going to happen. Lacey cannot come back … won’t come back. If she does—’

  Yorke’s phone rang. He looked at the screen. Iain. He knows already. The news had been broken.

  ‘Iain?’

  ‘Sir, my son, Ewan, he’s gone. Jesus, I only just found out his mother is dead, and he’s gone too.’

  ‘Don’t move.’

  He gestured at his police-issue Lexus. Jake nodded to acknowledge the request. They were gone within twenty seconds.

  When DS Iain Brookes had needed to get away from it all fifteen months ago, he’d literally opted for nothingness. He’d got himself a motorhome and found himself the quietest caravan site in the Salisbury Plains – one that sat in the shadow of a large forest. A local farmer, suffering in the current climate, had dedicated a chunk of his acreage to some long-term tenants in the hope of restoring some declining funds. Consequently, there were about ten people who had opted for the middle of nowhere over the chaos of life.

  Yorke, who didn’t possess much experience of relationships, had heard that divorce hit people in peculiar and varied ways, but a semi-recluse in a motorhome was a new one for him.

  As they neared the site, the forest thickened and the light faded away, so Yorke fought back with fog lights. He took the speedometer as high as it could go without making a safe corner an impossibility. Usually, the conversation between Jake and Yorke came thick and fast. Not tonight.

  When Brookes had first bought the motorhome, Yorke had thought it looked like an impenetrable fortress, solid and immoveable. Now, lodged out here in the woods, it seemed vulnerable, rather like a tin, ready to be opened and emptied into a pan. Yorke and Jake parked alongside it and were banging on the door within seconds.

  Ewan opened the door.

  Yorke’s eyes widened and Jake sighed loudly beside him.

  Yorke stepped into the motorhome, put his hand on the back of Ewan’s head, and pulled him tightly to his chest. ‘I’m so sorry, Ewan.’

  Ewan cried against him. From the kitchen area, Yorke saw FLO Bryan Kelly raise a hand in greeting, and then turn back to the sink, where he was attending to a build-up of pots and pans. On the sofa was their next-door neighbour Riley Thompson, a sixty-year-old ex-convict, who Brookes and Ewan thought very highly of. He also raised a hand in greeting, before rubbing his balding head. In the other hand, he clutched a walking stick so tightly that his knuckles sparkled.

  ‘Where’s my mum, Uncle Mike?’ Ewan said, his voice was muffled by tears and Yorke’s chest.

  Jake came up alongside Yorke and stroked Ewan’s head.

  Ewan said, ‘It’s not true, tell me it’s not true?’

  Yorke said, ‘I’m sorry–’

  ‘He was hiding outside in the woods.’ Brookes emerged from the bedroom. ‘I’m sorry I worried you.’

  Yorke looked up at Brookes. His eyes were swollen from crying, and he had a bottle of Asahi in one hand. How many have you had? Thought Yorke. He flashed his eyes Kelly’s way – you better be keeping an eye on that.

  ‘No need to be sorry, Iain,’ Yorke said. ‘We’re sorry. So very sorry.’

  ‘Yes, Iain,’ Jake said. ‘Anything you need, you got it.’

  Brookes put his bottle down on the side, and came over to put a hand on his son’s head. ‘Ewan ran, hid in the forest for a while, and came back. I get it. Probably would have done it myself for a while if it wasn’t so cold.’

  Ewan peeled away from Yorke’s embrace and followed his father over to the sofa. Brookes sat down, and hoisted Ewan up onto his knee.

  Yorke noticed movement in the forty-gallon tank by the sofa. He took a step forward and observed a blood-red snake easing itself out of a pile of aspen shavings.

  ‘Ewan’s corn snake,’ Brookes said.

  Yorke nodded. ‘I’m sorry Iain, but we need to get back. But can we talk first? It’ll only help matters.’

  ‘And rule me out?’ He smirked. ‘Never thought I’d be on this side.’

  ‘You are not on that side, Iain. We just need a timeline.’

  ‘A timeline?’

  He’d always struggled with authority at the best of times. Yorke realised that tonight would be no different. If anything, it’d be worse.

  ‘Let me get my son in bed.’

  ‘Of course.’

  With the nightlight on, Brookes sat on the bed
and Ewan shuffled up close to him. He kissed his son’s head and looked up at the framed picture of them all together at Disney Land. Right now, he couldn’t believe he’d ever laughed like that, but the evidence was there, as plain to see as the bear-hug Mickey Mouse was giving Jessica.

  He heard Ewan murmuring for his mother as he drifted into sleep.

  For a moment, he envied Jessica. He doubted that anyone who was dead actually felt dead. Right now, that was exactly how he felt. Dead. He prayed to God that his son did not feel that way too.

  After easing himself away from Ewan and covering him with his blanket, he heard a clatter. The framed picture had fallen. He took a deep breath and went to retrieve it. Fortunately, it remained upright against the wall and hadn’t smashed.

  As they waited in the lounge area for Brookes to return, Yorke’s mind journeyed back to the moment he had to break the news to his mother that her only daughter was dead.

  And not just dead. Murdered.

  ‘I met some bad people in my time,’ Riley said, ‘but it still stuns me to know that someone could walk into an innocent woman’s house and kill her.’

  Yorke nodded in agreement, acknowledging that Riley didn’t even know the full extent of what this bastard had done to Jessica.

  Riley noticed Jake staring at him. ‘I know what you’re thinking, but I did my time.’

  After the man accused of raping Riley’s wife twenty-seven years ago was acquitted, Riley had conducted his own trial and delivered the punishment swiftly. The cost? Half his life in a cell, his marriage and his children. Since his release, he’d spent the last two years living like Brookes. In self-imposed exile.

  Jake shrugged. ‘I’m not judging, someone else got there and did that before me.’

  Yorke looked at Jake. ‘DS Pettman? Maybe you could get us a glass of water?’

  Jake stood up. ‘Just what I was thinking, sir.’ He joined Bryan Kelly in the kitchen.