In Cold Blood
Page 1
In Cold Blood
Adam Croft
Copyright © 2021 Adam Croft
All rights reserved, but most of them are negotiable for the right price.
ISBN 978-1-912599-52-3
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. I’m not sure why you’d want to, but there you go.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. I mean, isn’t that a ridiculous thing to have to say when the series is quite clearly set in a real place? I had to put it, though, because otherwise the lawyers would tell me off. Ridiculous. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental, except where it isn’t.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd. Elcograf S.p.A., who didn’t even give me a discount for that bit of free advertising. The cheek of it.
Contents
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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
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Epilogue
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Acknowledgments
A special thank you to my patrons
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Adam Croft
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For more information, visit my website: adamcroft.net
More books by Adam Croft
RUTLAND CRIME SERIES
What Lies Beneath
On Borrowed Time
In Cold Blood
KNIGHT & CULVERHOUSE CRIME THRILLERS
Too Close for Comfort
Guilty as Sin
Jack Be Nimble
Rough Justice
In Too Deep
In The Name of the Father
With A Vengeance
Dead & Buried
In Too Deep
Snakes & Ladders
PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLERS
Her Last Tomorrow
Only The Truth
In Her Image
Tell Me I’m Wrong
The Perfect Lie
Closer To You
KEMPSTON HARDWICK MYSTERIES
Exit Stage Left
The Westerlea House Mystery
Death Under the Sun
The Thirteenth Room
The Wrong Man
All titles are available to order from all good book shops.
Signed and personalised editions available at adamcroft.net/shop.
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Foreign language editions of some titles are available in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Korean. These are available online and in book shops in their native countries.
EBOOK-ONLY SHORT STORIES
Gone
The Harder They Fall
Love You To Death
The Defender
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To find out more, visit adamcroft.net
Have you listened to the Rutland audiobooks?
The Rutland crime series is now available in audiobook format, narrated by Leicester-born Andy Nyman (Peaky Blinders, Unforgotten, Star Wars).
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What Lies Beneath and On Borrowed Time are available from all good audiobook retailers and libraries now, published by W.F. Howes on their QUEST and Clipper imprints.
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W.F. Howes are one of the world’s largest audiobook publishers and have been based in Leicestershire since their inception.
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1
Sean Taylor thrust his hands into his coat pockets, willing them to warm up again. He’d only taken them out for a matter of seconds to help Millie put her scarf back on, but it was baltic. The fields and meadows, usually green, were a whiteish-grey, the morning frost still heavy, crunching underfoot.
He pulled his own scarf back over his chin and mouth, feeling his beard slowly defrosting as he did so. Still, he’d promised Ciara and the girls an early morning walk, and that’s exactly what they were getting.
He didn’t mind too much, but he doubted he’d have suggested it without Ciara’s nudging. She tried a different health kick every new year, and 2021 wasn’t going to be any different. He was just astounded she’d made it to February this time, and had to admit that frosty walks were preferable to the cabbage soup diet she’d inflicted on them last year.
She was convinced the cold weather meant her body had to work harder to keep her warm, and that more blood would be drawn to the muscles, making her heart pump harder and faster, thus helping her lose more weight. Sean wasn’t entirely convinced as to the scientific basis behind that, but it was easier to smile and nod. After all, at least it wasn’t cabbage soup.
He watched as Millie and Mia sprinted across the cold, hard ground of Seaton Meadow, wondering where they got their energy from. It took him at least three hours and twice as many cups of coffee to feel even vaguely alert. Still, he and Ciara had both been able to get the half-term week off work, so he supposed he should be thankful for small mercies.
‘I don’t know where they get their energy from,’ Ciara said, as if reading his mind.
‘I know. Certainly isn’t from me.’
The girls looked up at the sound of a train soaring across the enormous Harringworth Viaduct, which intersected the meadow. It was a relatively rare sight, with only three trains passing over the viaduct on a busy day — and sometimes none at all. But it was always worth dragging the family out of bed to catch the sight of the 9.26 from Corby to Oakham soaring over Britain’s longest masonry viaduct, splitting the meadow in half in glorious style.
Officially, the area was called Seaton Meadows — two s’s — because of it. Sean had always considered it to be one field, especially as the train l
ine was twenty-odd metres above them and there was absolutely nothing stopping people walking easily between the two meadows through any of the dozen arches. And what was the difference between a field and a meadow, anyway? Still, he was sure there were locals that would argue until they were blue in the face that it was, in fact, two meadows and not one field.
He’d even heard some people calling the northern section the Seaton Viaduct, arguing that they couldn’t call that bit the Harringworth Viaduct like everyone called the rest of it, seeing as Harringworth was over the border in Northants and this bit was in Rutland. He could see their point, but took great pleasure in annoying both camps by only ever referring to it under its official, neutral name: the Welland Viaduct. With the River Welland forming the border between the two counties, it seemed to Sean to be the only logical moniker.
‘They’ll be knackered by the time we get home,’ Ciara said. ‘Should make for a quieter day than the last couple.’
‘Fingers crossed. I was half thinking about washing the car, but I think I might give that a miss if it’s going to stay like this. I might just sit with my hands and feet in the warm water instead. Girls, not too far please!’
Millie and Mia slowed down and waited for their parents to catch up, the morning mist thick, making it difficult to see more than a hundred yards at best. The last thing they needed was for one of them to disappear out of sight or, worse, tread in dog shit. It would be just their luck to find the one fresh steaming turd that hadn’t yet frozen solid.
Sean glanced at his watch. They’d been walking around for almost half an hour. ‘Shall we get back?’ he asked, fully expecting Ciara to give him a look and tell him something about her VO2 max or heart rate variability.
‘Good idea,’ she replied, her lips almost the colour of a Smurf.
‘Girls, come on. We’re going to head back to the car. Your mum’s about to turn into a block of ice.’
‘How? I’m boiling!’ Mia, the eldest, called.
‘Yeah, well, you’re practically mummified and you haven’t stopped running about all morning. Spare a thought for us crusty old dudes over here.’
‘Ugh, Dad. Don’t use words like that, pur-lease.’
‘Don’t tell me “dude” has gone out of fashion now.’
‘Only in, like, nineteen forty-six. No, I mean “crusty”. It’s revolting.’
Sean looked at Ciara as they shared a sympathetic look. ‘She’s nine, right? I mean, I didn’t just blink and lose ten years?’
‘Nope. She’s nine. Scariest thing is, Millie’ll be next. And sooner, probably, as she’ll copy her sister.’
Sean sighed. ‘Great. Can’t wait.’
To their credit, the girls both waited by the gate at the edge of the meadow, leading onto the B672. They’d parked just on the other side of the road, in a makeshift parking area under the arches of the viaduct. There were usually a few dog walkers or families parked up, but the weather and ridiculously early hour meant the Taylors had been, and still were, the first car there. Sean felt pretty sure it’d be a good hour or two before anyone else bothered, either.
The four of them crossed the road — the girls choosing to run — and made their way onto the parking area. The girls carried on running, weaving in and out of the arches, chasing each other like a pair of wailing banshees.
‘Come on, girls. In the car,’ Sean called, unlocking the family’s Vauxhall Meriva. ‘Whack the heater on, love. Bloody windscreen’s started to freeze again already.’
Before he could call over to Millie and Mia again, he was stopped dead in his tracks by an ear-piercing, blood-curdling scream. Without hesitation, he sprinted towards it. A few seconds later, he saw both his daughters and realised they were safe. They hadn’t screamed because they were hurt. They’d screamed because of what they’d seen.
Both girls were rooted to the spot, staring with horror at the wall of one of the arches. As Sean followed their eyes, his own blood turned cold. Propped against the wall, as blue-grey as the paintwork on their car, eyes cloudy and frozen with a layer of frost, was the dead body of a man.
2
Caroline Hills sat down at her desk and opened her email inbox. She was glad she’d just had a few days off, because she was feeling tired enough as it was.
If she’d thought the exhaustion from chemotherapy had been bad, nothing could have prepared her for how absolutely bloody knackered she was following the hysterectomy. The six weeks off work had been hellish from a psychological point of view, but physically she knew they’d been necessary. The doctors had told her how much energy the recovery would take, but she’d presumed they were just being overly cautious. That was until she’d realised that even making a cup of tea had felt like running five circuits of Rutland Water.
If she was honest with herself, she struggled to remember the last time she’d had any real energy. The family’s move to Rutland had been intended to re-energise and invigorate them all, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. She just hoped they were now through the worst of it and that things would start to look up for them all.
Her recovery from the operation meant Christmas at home was a given, and it had the added benefit that Mark’d had to do all of the cooking and preparations. Still, Christmas seemed a long time ago now, and it wouldn’t be long before they were looking forward to their summer holiday. Based on the arctic conditions she’d experienced that morning, though, summer seemed a whole lot further away than it really was.
Everything looked so bleak in the winter, and she found it hard to even visualise what things looked like in July. Just walking through her frozen back garden to the compost heap earlier that morning, it seemed impossible to even imagine she’d be sitting out in the sun just a matter of weeks later. Not that she’d ever get the time or five minutes’ silence to actually do so, but that was beside the point.
She’d been gradually eased back into work, not having realised just how bloody exhausted she was going to be. She wondered how much of it was because she’d been sitting around for six weeks as opposed to being a result of the operation itself, but she supposed it didn’t really matter. Either way, she’d suffered the crushing realisation that she wasn’t Superwoman after all.
The lack of energy was offset only by the overpowering, overwhelming boredom. Since she’d been on reduced duties, she’d felt her brain going to mush, and she knew that’d take much longer to overcome than physical tiredness. She’d been playing it down at work, showing Chief Superintendent Derek Arnold that she was perfectly capable of taking on bigger, beefier work. So far, though, there hadn’t been anything particularly beefy to take on.
Mark and the boys had been wonderful. Mark had told his clients he’d be working shorter hours and taking some time off, and he’d been good to his word. She couldn’t grumble about any of that; she just wished she’d never had to have the operation in the first place.
She and Mark had only ever wanted two children, and there’d been no question of having a third, but she couldn’t deny it felt like a violation to have that choice taken away from her. It was something she couldn’t put into words, which was the main reason she hadn’t brought it up with Mark. She’d gone down her usual road of pretending everything was fine. Often, that was easier than bringing up issues or concerns. After all, what was the point? It wasn’t going to change the material facts of the situation.
She selected a batch of emails she wasn’t interested in and shouldn’t have been sent anyway, and deleted them. The vast majority of stuff that got sent to her was completely pointless. She often wondered how many work hours were lost in police stations across the country because of needless emails. Someone had to sit down and write the things in the first place, then countless people had to open them, realise they were either nonsense or had been sent to the wrong person, then delete them. Even rounded down to five minutes a day, multiplied by however many police officers there were, spread across the year, would surely add up to enough money to at least fix the soddin
g coffee machine. Or, at the very least, they could avoid having to sell off police land to the private school next door.
By the time Caroline had reduced the number of unread emails in her inbox from 196 to 181, there was a knock on her door.
‘Come in,’ she called, watching as the door opened and Detective Sergeant Dexter Antoine poked his head round the door.
‘Morning,’ he said. ‘How you feeling?’
‘Morning, Dex. Depends who’s asking.’
‘A dead body.’
Caroline cocked her head slightly. ‘Well, well. Medical science never ceases to amaze me. What do we know about our talking corpse?’
‘Not a huge amount. Family out for a morning walk down near Harringworth Viaduct found him. Middle-aged guy in running gear, sitting up inside one of the arches.’