HAYDEN LEWIS WAS scared – not for himself, but for Kate. He had to admit that at first he had been pretty sceptical about her claim that she was being targeted by some shadowy assassin, but discovering the bug on her car had changed all that and the fact that the murder of Ray Jury must have been committed within an hour or so of their visit to the car-breaker’s yard was just too much of a coincidence. Kate was in deadly peril, he was convinced of it, and he feared that the clock was already ticking. Why the hell hadn’t he overruled her protests and insisted on escorting her to her flat in the first place? He would never forgive himself if anything had happened to her.
‘Weak, weak, weak,’ he blazed at himself, hammering the steering wheel with the palm of one hand. ‘Always so damned spineless.’
He continued to beat himself up most of the way to Bridgwater and it was because of his angry recriminations that he failed to spot the Land Rover in time. It passed him on the opposite side of the dual carriageway just after he had left Dumball Wharf behind and even as it disappeared into the elastic darkness, his wide-eyed stare confirmed that the vehicle was identical to the one Kate had earlier described to him: a grey coloured, hard-top Defender, with a snorkel fitted, showing one red and one white light to the rear.
Travelling at speed on the opposite side of a substantial central reservation, he had no chance of picking out the driver or even part of the index number, but he knew instinctively that it was the right vehicle and his skin crawled at the thought of where it must have just come from. Gordon Bennett – Kate!
Deep down he knew he was already too late, but that didn’t stop his right foot from trying to push the accelerator pedal all the way through the floor to the road surface and the milk tanker negotiating the big roundabout on the outskirts of Bridgwater had to slam on its brakes to avoid him as he emerged from the dual carriageway in a blur. But Lewis was unrepentant. Careless driving or speeding tickets he could deal with, but the corpse of Kate Hamblin he could not.
Seconds later he pulled up with a slither of tyres in front of the grim tower block where Kate had her flat and leaped from the car like a madman, skidding on the icy pavement as he headed for the main door and almost bowling over a young couple in the process of leaving the building.
Beat music thudded out from somewhere above his head and the smell of curry greeted him as he bounded up the stairs. Everything seemed so refreshingly normal and he began to wonder whether he was about to make a prize ass of himself. But that thought was immediately discarded the moment he reached the door of Kate’s flat. It was half open.
‘Kate?’ he called, his voice cracked and unnatural as he carefully pushed the door right back. ‘It’s Hayden. Are you OK?’
There was no reply and he saw that the flat was in darkness save for a pool of light cast by a standard lamp in the far corner, which illuminated a solitary armchair. His hand fumbled for the main light switch just inside the door, but flicking the switch produced no response. Damn it!
Then, as his eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he saw for the first time what looked like someone sitting in the armchair under the standard lamp and his heart missed a beat when he caught the gleam of auburn hair.
‘Kate!’ he shouted, only to realize when he stumbled across the room that she was not sitting in the chair at all, but lolling forward, her head resting on her chest and her shoulder-length hair hanging down over her face.
Kneeling beside her, he saw that her wrists were tied to the chair arms with some kind of nylon cord that cut right into the flesh and she did not appear to be breathing. Gripped by panic, he rummaged in his pocket for his clasp knife and quickly severed her bonds before trying to push her back in the chair. But the moment he took his hands away from her, she fell forward on to his shoulder, limp and unresponsive. Her hair in his face smelled strangely earthy and her body emanated a coldness that terrified him. He grasped her wrist and felt for a pulse, but could detect nothing.
‘Come on, Kate,’ he pleaded and, supporting her with the palm of one hand against her shoulder, used the other to feel for a pulse in her neck. But there was not the faintest tremor and even as the horrible truth hit him with sledgehammer force, a familiar voice in the gloom behind the chair confirmed his worst fears.
‘You’re too late. She’s dead.’
DCI Roz Callow had had a long tiring day and now, with the murder of Ray Jury, it looked like getting a lot longer. Her situation was not helped by the press either. Descending on the crime scene like a pack of jackals within minutes of her arrival, they had been clamouring for information ever since – kept at bay solely by the perimeter fence and a pair of wire gates, which had required wedging shut with a police Transit van after the crew of the initial response car had found them standing wide open.
Ray Jury still lay where he had been found, within a few yards of his caravan, shielded from the media’s flash cameras by a couple of police accident signs and a few bollards pending the arrival of the pathologist and forensic team. The doctor the uniformed officers had called out to certify death had already given the cause as a broken neck and since there was nothing Jury could have fallen from, it didn’t need the expertise of Sherlock Holmes to deduce that his death must have been due to foul play – and that in itself worried Callow.
As an experienced detective, she knew that it was not that easy to break a person’s neck without using a weapon of some sort and the doctor had already pointed out that there were no signs of any external injuries consistent with a blow. This suggested that the former proprietor of the breaker’s yard had been killed by someone with the skill to do the job with his bare hands. An ex-army man perhaps? Special Services maybe? But why? Jury was known to the police for ringing cars and he was suspected of doing a nice little trade in forged documents too, but he was nevertheless small fry – not someone who would have attracted a contract from one of the big-time villains.
All very perplexing, but with her boss tucked up at headquarters on a briefing with the assistant chief constable in charge of territorial policing and the current double murder investigation floundering due to the failure of her team to flush out the main suspect, she reckoned she had quite enough on her plate without falling for another complicated murder inquiry. Her sour mood was plainly reflected in her expression when the SOCO team arrived and set up their powerful spotlights, but her transformation turned out to be just a few steps away and it was unwittingly brought about by Detective Inspector Roscoe, who approached her from the caravan.
‘Thought you should hear this, ma’am,’ he said, nodding towards a greasy-looking man in an anorak who was trailing behind him.
Callow studied the man with undisguised contempt. ‘So who is he?’ she snapped, as if he wasn’t there.
‘Lenny Stallard, one of Ray Jury’s men,’ Roscoe replied, then nodded to the man again. ‘Tell the boss what you told me.’
Stallard shrugged. ‘Ain’t much to tell. Left the yard when Ray closed the place at five. Ray stayed be’ind an’ I locked him in. Never saw him again.’
Callow frowned. ‘Why did he stay behind?’
Stallard grinned, seemingly unaffected by Jury’s death. ‘Fievein’. We’d ’ad a lot of stuff nicked lately an’ Ray said ’e was goin’ to nail ’em.’
‘And the rest,’ Roscoe encouraged. ‘Tell her the rest.’
‘Oh yeah, we ’ad a visitor just afore Ray closed up – some bird an’ a bloke. They come to look at the MX5 job over there.’ He waved an arm towards the concrete hard-standing.
Callow turned quickly to look in the direction he was indicating. ‘That’s Kate Hamblin’s car, isn’t it?’ she snapped at Roscoe.
‘Yeah,’ Stallard cut in before Roscoe could reply, ‘I fink that’s what the bird’s name was. Anyways, I saw the bloke bend down and pull somefink off from underneaf. Then the pair of ’em looked at it afore drivin’ away. Told Ray they’d ’alf-inched somefink, but ’e said it was the bird’s motor, so she could take whatever she liked.’
Callow’s eyes were gleaming now. ‘What did the man with her look like?’
‘Dunno. Didn’t pay too much attention like. Tall, lot of ’air.’ He chuckled. ‘Looked a bit like that London mayor geezer – Boris Johnson. But I clocked the car – nice red Mk2 Jag it was. Not many of them about today – ’cept the one that used to be driven by that copper, Inspector Morse, on the telly.’
Callow wore a triumphant smile as she turned away from him and popped an extra strong peppermint into her mouth. ‘Now that is interesting,’ she murmured, ‘very interesting indeed.’
Kate Hamblin looked like a ghost on the fringes of the light from the standard lamp, her eyes hollow black depressions in a cold white mask that quivered spasmodically. She was right on the edge of reason and Lewis lunged round the armchair to catch her as she suddenly collapsed into his arms.
He carried her across the room and through a door into what turned out to be a bedroom and flicked on the light – one that worked this time – before laying her gently on the bed. She lay there, eyes wide open, lips trembling, trying to speak, but somehow unable to form the words.
‘Thank God you’re safe,’ Lewis gasped, sitting on the bed beside her. ‘For a moment I thought—’
‘Took out the other light bulbs,’ Kate blurted suddenly. ‘Waited for me to come home.’
‘Who is she?’ Lewis asked gently, shuddering as he remembered the battered face, bloodied nose, and the tell-tale scars on the dead girl’s thin white wrists. ‘She looks so much like you.’
Kate’s eyes focused on his face with a peculiar intensity, then abruptly drifted away, staring at the ceiling. ‘My twin, Linda,’ she whispered. ‘Must have come here looking for help and in the dark he thought she was me. Looks like he roughed her up before—’
Lewis patted her hand and stood up. ‘I have to get some help,’ he said. ‘You stay here, OK?’
He went outside on to the landing to make his mobile call to headquarters control room, requesting backup and an ambulance. His voice was shaking as he provided the necessary information and he had only just slipped his mobile back into his pocket and returned to the flat, when he heard a sound and saw Kate standing in the bedroom doorway.
‘No, old girl,’ he said, stepping quickly towards her and guiding her back into the bedroom, ‘you have to lie down. You’ve had a terrible shock.’
To his surprise, she shook her head. ‘No tears, Hayden,’ she whispered and bit her lip in pain, one hand darting to her still badly bruised chest as she began to sway unsteadily in front of him. ‘No tears. Waste of time.’ She stared at him, again with that same intense expression. ‘No love between us,’ she said. ‘Unusual for a twin, isn’t it? Tried to help her to quit, but she was too far gone.’ She hesitated. ‘At peace now.’
He was conscious of the fact that he was gaping at her. This wasn’t the sort of reaction he would have expected from someone who had just found her sister brutally murdered, but it was apparent that the shock was still there and she was dangerously close to collapsing again. Getting a grip on his own emotions, he more or less forced her down into a sitting position on the edge of the bed. Somewhere outside he could hear the distant scream of sirens.
‘Do you think it would have been quick for Linda?’ she asked.
He nodded automatically, feeling tears of his own coming. ‘Yes, old girl. It would have been quick,’ he said, without knowing whether it would have been quick or not.
‘We’ve got to find him, Hayden,’ she said, sudden unexpected venom in her tone. ‘The murdering bastard mustn’t get away with this.’
He patted her hand again, his face grim. ‘We’ll find him, never fear, old girl,’ he said. ‘But first we’ve got to prepare ourselves for some awkward questions from the team, you do realize that, don’t you?’
She gave a faint humourless smile. ‘And the Wicked Witch of the North,’ she added.
‘’Fraid so,’ he replied, ‘especially the Wicked Witch.’
Then the time for conversation was over. Heavy footsteps racing up the stairs as a powerful flashing blue light stained the walls of the bedroom from below. Help had finally arrived and he should have felt relieved. So why then did the prospect fill him with such foreboding?