Eyes of the Wicked
Adam J. Wright
Contents
The Murder Force Series
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
Also Available at Amazon
The Murder Force Series
Book 1: Eyes of the Wicked
Book 2: Silence of the Bones
Book 3: Remains of the Night
Chapter One
December 21st
“We’re not lost,” Melissa Wood said to her husband. “The SatNav knows exactly where we’re going.” She glanced at the illuminated map on the car’s dashboard. Their Volvo was shown as a red arrow following a twisting blue line. The display showed nothing on either side of the car other than solid blocks of green pixels.
Melissa turned her attention to the windscreen. Other than the section of road illuminated in the Volvo’s headlights, everything else was lost to the night. She knew they were driving through moors and woodland and might have liked to see the barren landscape that was such a contrast to their hometown of Birmingham but the thin sliver of moon high above them did nothing to illuminate their surroundings. It was as if they were driving through ink.
“She’s been quiet for too long,” Jeff said, looking at the map. In the glow from the dashboard, his features seemed ghostly, an effect heightened by the blackness of the window behind his profile. He tapped the digital map and said, “Speak to me. Where are we?”
“She’s not saying anything because we need to follow this road for another nine miles before she gives us the next direction. She won’t have a chat with you on the way. She’ll speak when she needs to.” Melissa smiled at her husband’s lack of distrust where technology was concerned.
Even she had to admit, though, that the computerised female voice—which had talked incessantly when they were driving through Birmingham—would be a welcome sound out here in the middle of nowhere.
She looked at the map again. The red arrow was following the blue line. That was all there was to it. They were on the right route. And this pitch-black road was probably a lot less creepy during the daytime.
It had been Jeff’s idea to travel at night. The Christmas holidays started tomorrow so the traffic on the motorways would be horrendous. Cars packed with families and their belongings would be bumper to bumper. There would be accidents. Traffic jams
Jeff’s idea to avoid all that had been a good one. They’d arrive at the house his parents had rented in Whitby later tonight, get a good night’s sleep, and wake up refreshed tomorrow when the rest of the extended family arrived for the annual festivities.
Jeff’s parents rented a different house every year for the family gathering and it was usually somewhere posh. Last year, it had been in Devon. The travelling had been a bit much—another reason for their nocturnal journey this year—but the place had been stunning and they’d spent Christmas afternoon on the beach.
Melissa always enjoyed the Wood family get-togethers. Her own parents had been killed in a car crash over a decade ago and she’d been an only child, so it wasn’t like she had anywhere else to go at this time of year.
She was distant from her few living relations, so she’d been glad when Jeff’s folks had accepted her as one of their own. And now that she was expecting a baby to extend the Wood dynasty—a girl due to arrive next year—they’d taken her even more under their wing.
“I don’t like this,” Jeff said. “It’s too bloody dark. What if someone was standing in the road? I’d never see them until it was too late.”
“Why would someone be standing in the road in the middle of nowhere at this hour? I haven’t seen a house since we passed those cottages half an hour ago. There’s no one out here so stop worrying.”
“I’m not worrying, I just don’t want to kill someone.”
“I’d be more worried about the wildlife. They have deer out here, don’t they?” She felt a sudden irrational fear that they might hit a large animal and crash into the trees at the side of the road. They’d be stuck out here all night. Her phone, which was sitting on the dashboard, had lost its signal at about the same time they’d left the cottages behind. She hadn’t seen any other vehicles since then either, so the chances of them flagging down another motorist were slim.
“I don’t know if there are deer here or not,” he said.
“Just drive carefully,” she told him.
“I am driving bloody carefully.”
Melissa looked out of the windscreen at that moment and saw a pale figure standing in the pool of light cast by the headlights. “Jeff!” she screamed.
He slammed his foot on the brakes. The car shuddered and the squeal of the tyres against the road sounded like a banshee proclaiming a tragedy.
The figure caught in the headlights wasn’t a deer. Melissa’s fear of hitting one and crashing into the trees suddenly seemed silly because what was about to happen was worse than that. Much, much worse.
A young girl stood in the middle of the road. She couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen years old. She wore a white nightgown that seemed old-fashioned and made Melissa wonder—hope might be a better word—that the girl was a ghost or a figment of her imagination.
The sudden flash of hope disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived; Melissa didn’t believe in ghosts and the fact that Jeff had hit the brakes meant he saw the girl too, so she wasn’t imagining her.
Not only had he hit the brakes, Jeff was shouting, “No, no, no!” and pulling back on the steering wheel as if doing so could stop the car.
The girl’s face was partly hidden by her long dark hair, but Melissa clearly saw her eyes widen in terror and her mouth form an “O” of surprise.
She closed her own eyes, desperate not to see that face disappear under the front bumper of the Volvo. She waited for the telltale thump that would signal the impact of steel on flesh, but it never came. Instead, the car juddered to a halt and stalled.
“Are you all right?” Jeff asked.
“Yes,” she said, opening her eyes.
He looked down at her belly. “The baby?”
“We’re fine.” She struggled out of her seatbelt, which had locked around her. “We need to see if that girl is okay.”
“I didn’t hit her,” he said. Then he repeated the words under his breath, as if reciting a mantra. “I didn’t hit her.”
Melissa opened her door and got out. The chiming of the car’s open door warning system seemed unusually loud. The smell of burnt rubber rose from the tyres and the road.
“Is she okay?” Jeff asked, getting out on his side.
“I don’t know,” she said. There was no sign of the girl. The headlights shone on an empty section of road.
Melissa shivered. The night air held a sharp chill.
She wasn’t a gh
ost. She was real. She has to be somewhere.
A rustling by the side of the road caught her attention. The girl appeared, fleeing from the darkness. She sprinted towards the Volvo, pulled open the back door, and clambered inside.
“Hey!” Jeff shouted. “What are you doing?” He leaned against the window and peered in at the girl. Then he looked at Melissa, his face as white as a sheet. “Oh my God, she’s covered in blood.”
Melissa went to the rear of the Volvo and opened the door. The girl cowered away from her, pressing herself against the opposite door. For a moment, Melissa wondered if she was going to open that door and run but the girl seemed to be terrified of something other than Melissa and Jeff. Something on the moors?
“We’re not going to hurt you,” she said gently.
“I didn’t hit her,” Jeff said. “I stopped in time. There shouldn’t be blood.”
The girl’s nightgown was stained with deep red blots. Melissa cast her mind back to when she’d first seen the girl in the headlights. Had she been bloody then? Yes, she was sure of it. The girl had been covered in blood when she’d first appeared on the road.
“Were you in an accident?” she asked, wondering if some poor family had experienced the accident she’d been dreading further along the road. Maybe this girl was the only survivor and she’d been wandering around in a daze.
She didn’t look like she’d been in an accident, though. Other than the blood on her nightgown, she seemed unhurt. There were no wounds on her arms and legs other than a multitude of thin scratches that were probably the result of running through the woods.
“I don’t think it’s her blood,” Melissa said. The small scratches wouldn’t make the large stains of red that she could see on the nightgown.
“Thank God for that!” Jeff said. He frowned and leaned closer to the open door, inspecting the girl. “So whose blood is it?”
“That’s not important at the moment,” Melissa told him. “We’ve got to get her to a hospital. She seems to be in shock. I think she was in an accident.”
“I’ll call an ambulance,” he said, fishing his phone out of his pocket. He looked at the screen and his face fell. “Have you got a signal? Mine’s dead.”
“No, I haven’t.” She turned her attention to the girl. “Listen, we’re going to get you to a hospital. Everything will be all right.” She attempted a reassuring smile but was sure the girl would see through it.
She didn’t feel she had any right to try and reassure the girl of anything; something bad had obviously happened. If this poor girl’s family had been killed in a car crash, her life would never be the same again. Melissa knew that from experience and her heart went out to the cowering, blood-covered girl in the back seat.
“Where’s the nearest hospital?” she asked Jeff. She knew the question was futile—her husband had no more idea about hospitals in this area than she did—but she asked it anyway.
“How should I know?” He was jabbing at his phone’s screen, as if doing so would miraculously resurrect the dead signal.
Melissa scanned the darkness around them for some sign that they might be near a village or even a house that had a landline with which they could call an ambulance. A cold wind blew across the moors, chilling her. The sky was choked with thick clouds and small flakes of snow danced in the air.
She spotted lights in the distance, perhaps half a mile away, although she couldn’t judge the distance with any certainty due to the almost impenetrable blackness of the night.
“Over there,” she said to Jeff, pointing at the lights. “We need to get over there.”
He threw up his arms in a helpless gesture. “And how do you propose we do that? We can’t tell the SatNav to take us to the lights in the distance. It doesn’t work that way.”
“There must be a road up ahead,” she said, getting back into the car. “It looks like a village so there’ll be a road.”
Jeff got back in behind the wheel. “Shouldn’t we continue to Whitby? We can get help there.”
“Those lights are closer,” she told him.
With a sigh of resignation, he put the Volvo into gear and set off along the road again. “Keep an eye out for that road.”
“I will,” Melissa said. She turned in her seat to look at the girl who was cowering in the back. “Don’t you worry. We’re going to get help for you.”
The girl looked at her with terrified eyes and said nothing.
Melissa turned back to face the windscreen, remembering that she had to look out for a road that would take them to the nearby village. Another memory forced its way into her head. An image on a TV screen.
“Oh my God,” she said, when she realized where the memory had come from.
Jeff looked at her from the corner of his eye as he navigated the winding road. “What’s the matter?”
“She’s that girl from the News,” she said, lowering her voice. “The one who went missing.”
Jeff glanced up at the rearview mirror to look at the girl. “Are you sure?”
The more she thought about it, the more certain she was. There had been photos of the girl on every channel and in the papers. And now, she was here in the back of their car. Melissa was sure the girl had gone missing almost a month ago. Where had she been all that time?
“How did we get ourselves involved in this?” Jeff asked under his breath.
“We’re helping someone in trouble,” she said. “If it was our daughter who needed help”—she touched her swollen stomach almost unconsciously—“we’d want someone to do the same.”
Jeff pointed at the windscreen. “This must be the road.”
Melissa looked out. It was snowing more heavily now, the fat flakes tumbling in the headlight beams. The road ahead snaked away from the one they were currently on towards the lights in the distance.
“Take it,” she told him.
They turned onto the road, which was barely wide enough for the car, and followed it. Jeff kept their speed at barely more than ten miles an hour; he was probably still shook up after almost hitting the girl and also wary of sudden bends in the road lurking unseen in the darkness ahead.
When they finally reached the village, which was barely more than half a dozen buildings huddled together against the weather, Melissa said, “Stop here. There are lights on in that house.”
She waited for the car to come to a complete stop and got out, blinking against the falling snow as she trudged to the house’s front door. She knocked and waited, shivering as the biting wind cut through her clothes and chilled her skin.
If they hadn’t found the girl, she would have quickly frozen to death out there on the moors.
The door opened and an elderly gentleman in a dark blue jumper and baggy trousers looked at her expectantly. “Hello?”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Melissa said, “but do you have a phone? I need to call an ambulance.”
“An ambulance?” He looked past her to the Volvo. “Has there been an accident?”
A voice came from somewhere inside the house. “Dad? Who is it?” A dark-haired woman in her forties appeared. She wore an apron and looked like she’d been cooking. Melissa realised she could smell something delicious on the air that reached her on the porch; something like warm scones or biscuits.
“There’s been an accident,” the old man said to his daughter. “This lady needs an ambulance.”
The woman’s eyes widened. “Oh my God, what happened?”
“There’s no accident,” Melissa said. “We found a girl wandering on the moors.”
“A girl?”
Melissa nodded. “I think it’s the girl who went missing some time ago. Do you have a phone?”
“Yes, of course, come in.”
The old man stepped aside, and Melissa went into the house, thankful to be out of the wind.
The woman picked up the receiver of a phone that was attached to the wall and handed it to Melissa.
“While you’re on to them, I’ll fetch Mrs S
ummers,” she said. “An ambulance will take a while to get here. She only lives half a mile away.” She pulled a pair of walking boots from behind the door and took a heavy coat from a peg on the wall.
“Mrs Summers?” Melissa asked.
“She’s a police detective,” the woman said. “If the girl is the one who went missing, she’ll know what to do. Bring her into the house where it’s warm. Dad, make them a cup of tea.” She pointed a key fob out into the night and the headlights of a Land Rover illuminated briefly. “I’ll be back shortly,” the woman said before going out to the vehicle.
“I’ll put the kettle on,” the old man said, making his way to the kitchen.
Melissa dialled 999 and realised she didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know where they should send the ambulance. “Where are we?” she shouted after the man.
“Rosemoor House. Tollby village,” he said.
When the operator answered, she told him she’d found a girl wandering on the moors and that she was in shock and might have hypothermia. He told her he was sending an ambulance right away and she gave him the address the old man had given her.
After hanging up, she went out to the car and opened the rear door. The girl shrank away from her and pressed herself against the opposite door.
“Do you want to come inside?” Melissa asked in as gentle a voice as she could muster. “It’s nice and warm and they’ve even got scones. I’m sure they’d let you have one.”
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