MURDER AMONG FRIENDS a totally gripping crime thriller full of twists Read online

  From the house — she sometimes used the word cottage — it was only a few minutes’ walk to Lincoln’s famous Steep Hill, which led in one direction to the Castle square and the Cathedral Quarter, and in the other, down to the shops on the High Street. Steep Hill was lined on either side with an array of independent shops selling everything from craft beers to vintage clothes. Cafés, pubs and restaurants abounded. It was a privilege to live in this quiet but vibrant area of the city’s historic quarter. Village life was all but forgotten.

  Jane started up her laptop, looked up the website of the Lincolnshire Post and searched for news of the murder. It wasn’t hard to find. Murder grabbed the headlines like nothing else, it seemed.

  The victim was described as a twenty-three-year-old male student who had been found dead in suspicious circumstances. His name had not been released to the media, presumably, because his family had not yet been informed of his death. There was an appeal for witnesses to contact 101, or Crimestoppers if they wished to remain anonymous.

  DI Warwick had cautioned Jane against speaking to the media. As if she would! She was perfectly well aware that it was up to the senior investigating officer, in consultation with the force press office, to determine when and how much information to make public.

  Jane’s involvement in the case was effectively over. She had her report to finish but after she’d printed it out and signed it off, the investigation would be out of her hands. She sighed. It hadn’t occurred to her that she would feel constrained by the limitations of her new role. She envied Warwick and her young colleague, DS Harper, who would have the satisfaction of working the case to its conclusion.

  Jane had spoken with a number of specials before applying for the force. They’d all talked about the sense of satisfaction the job brought. Now, she wondered if it would be enough, dealing with binge-drinkers and minor incidents. How much more satisfying to use your intellect to solve a crime instead. But you couldn’t just wake up at the age of forty-five and decide you wanted to become a detective. The majority of police officers retired at fifty!

  How old was DI Warwick, she wondered. Mid to late thirties, perhaps? That one time she had smiled at her colleague, faint lines had shown around her eyes and mouth. There were no streaks of grey in her hair, as far as it was possible to tell in the dim light.

  Jane had a few hours until her next shift. She’d gone to bed around three- thirty in the morning after devouring a bowl of cereal and a cup of tea. Did that count as breakfast? It was ten o’clock now. She’d slept for around six hours and her stomach was rumbling.

  Eating after her shift would have to stop. She’d soon start to pile on weight if she made a habit of having two breakfasts. Come to think of it, she’d eaten during her shift too. She and PC Sterne had shared a large bag of chips at 10 p.m. At this rate she’d end up failing her next fitness test.

  She monitored the news updates on the Lincolnshire Post website throughout the day, in between cleaning the house and hoovering up all the bits of stray tinsel that seemed to be in every room. It was the sixth of January, twelfth night for some. Not for Jane. She always made sure Christmas was packed away by the fifth, just in case. No sense in risking a year of bad luck.

  More details emerged as time passed, including the victim’s name. That meant his family had received the heartbreaking news of their son’s tragic death. Jane felt a lump in her throat.

  Later, she was surprised to see an update stating that a special constable on her fledgling shift had been first on the scene. To her profound relief, there was no mention of her name.

  Chapter Three

  Steeephanie . . . Her name was a taunting whisper inside her head, uttered by the voice of a dead man. This was the only way Cal could get to her now. In her dreams.

  Lately, he was becoming more devious. He’d learned the art of disguise. Tonight, he was Steph’s dead father. She saw through the illusion as soon as the apparition whispered her name. Cal was useless at voices. Her father’s face dissolved before her eyes and Cal stood a table’s width away from her, revealed as the monster he was. Steph recoiled. The monster lunged. Steph started awake, shivering in her drenched pyjamas, heart pounding in her ears.

  They’d been doing this long enough for Steph to have acquired some techniques to beat Cal at his own game. One of these was lucid dreaming. The idea was to learn how to be conscious that she was dreaming and attempt to manipulate the narrative, dial down the threat Cal posed. Transform him into something benign, like a fluffy kitten or a floppy bunny.

  But her tormentor was clever. He’d quickly caught on to what Steph was up to. Virus-like, he’d adapted. Now, he was the kitten. Or the floppy bunny. Anything or anyone she did not fear. Even by his standards, Cal had sunk to a new low tonight. She’d been sixteen years old when her dad had died. He was the only man she’d ever loved — Cal excepted.

  Steph felt a profound sadness. It seemed obvious that Cal had devised this new strategy with the intention of forcing her to associate his vile apparition with the people she loved. She dreaded seeing his face every time she remembered the kind and loving father that John Warwick had been.

  “You’re dead, Cal! Go back to Hell where you belong.” Shouting aloud made her feel better. It was a relief when Cal didn’t answer back this time. But what it said about her state of mind was unsettling. She was shouting at a man who existed only inside her head.

  Steph hadn’t expected to dream at all. She’d put a lot of hours in over the weekend but not even exhaustion, it seemed, could guarantee a night free of terrors. It was 5.30 a.m. Dawn was still a long way off. Going back to sleep was no longer an option. Why give Cal a second chance?

  Steph showered away any lingering memory of the nightmare. The coldness of the bathroom’s stone floor had her dancing from foot to foot as she towelled herself dry. Even so, chills travelled, cramp-like, all the way up into her calves. One of these days, she’d get around to buying a mat.

  Downstairs, now wrapped in a fleecy dressing gown, she made herself some porridge. As the hob warmed up it released a thin trail of smoke and the acrid smell of something burning. The culprit was a large blob of porridge spilt the day before — the last time she’d had a hot meal.

  Home was a terraced house on a street off Burton Road, near the Ellis Mill, a tower mill dating from the eighteenth century and still in working order. Nearby Burton Road had a decent mix of shops, takeaways and places to eat and drink. The Bailgate with all its attractions was only a short walk away.

  She read a crime novel while she ate her porridge. It was full of procedural errors. She thought of her gran, who’d been a nurse, tutting at Casualty. It used to annoy her at the time, but now she understood. They should get these things right.

  Mark Ripley’s death had been reported on the news the previous day. A lot of fuss was being made about a rookie special constable being first on the scene. As if that was the most interesting part of the story. Some eager journalist would be desperate to discover her identity and arrange an interview. Maybe Bell had been contacted already. You couldn’t blame the press for trying, it would make a good human-interest story. But she’d reminded Bell that she shouldn’t speak to the press. They’d have to make do with whatever crumbs the press office was prepared to share.

  Thankfully, Jane Bell hadn’t seemed the type to crave publicity. Steph couldn’t now recall much about her appearance. She’d guessed her to be somewhere in her forties. It had been hard to tell much else about her in the gloomy light. She’d been wearing a bulky hi-vis jacket, which made it difficult to gauge her shape. Perhaps a bit on the dumpy side? Steph reckoned she had a couple of inches on Bell height-wise, a fact that should have been irrelevant, but for some reason, she found it oddly satisfying.

  On Saturday, she and Elias had interviewed the man in the dressing gown who had come out of his house in the early hours of the morning. They and their colleagues had now spoken to the occupants of all the other houses in the area. An appeal had gone
out for anyone with information to contact the police.

  One woman, Isabella Porter, had been standing at her bedroom window around midnight. She claimed to have heard a scuffle coming from the direction of the Greestone Stairs. Unfortunately, she hadn’t been able to see anything because her windows didn’t overlook the stairs. She hadn’t thought anything of it. There was often a bit of noise at that time on a Friday night from people taking a shortcut up or down the steps on their way home from an evening out. It might even have been a fox, or a cat. She really couldn’t say.

  A trawl of the city’s taxi firms was underway in an effort to trace the young woman on Mark’s phone. This had not yet yielded a result.

  When she arrived at the police station, a new purpose-built edifice on Newport, Steph was greeted with some potentially good news. A young woman had turned up claiming to have information that might help the police with their investigation into the murder of Mark Ripley. Elias had shown her into an interview room, and he and Steph made their way there immediately. She had a hunch she was going to be the elusive young woman in the selfie and was eager to hear what the woman had to say. She was right.

  “My name’s Elle Darrow. I heard about Mark Ripley’s murder on the news this morning and I was, like, how can this be true? I was only with him on Friday evening.”

  The young woman looked at Steph, eyes shining beneath lashes clumpy with mascara. Steph nodded encouragingly. She sensed that Elle Darrow was going to be a bit of a drama queen. A second later, her suspicions were confirmed. Elle fanned her face with her hands, eyes wide to stop her tears making her mascara run. A solitary forced (to Steph’s mind) tear rolled down her left cheek. Elias handed her a tissue, which she refused.

  “Take your time.” Steph spoke gently, keeping a lid on her frustration. Attention-seekers were a pet hate of hers. A young man’s dead, for goodness sake. It’s not about you.

  “I don’t know why I’m so upset. I didn’t even know him that well. We only spent a few hours together.” She made a sound like a sob, though her tear ducts didn’t get the message. “But there was, like, an instant connection. Do you know what I mean? A kind of chemistry between us?” She sighed, eyes drifting to Elias. “Maybe it was love at first sight.”

  Steph forced her facial muscles into an expression of sympathy. Her intuition about Darrow had been spot on. She was here for her moment in the spotlight, not because she’d cared for Mark. “Tell me about your evening with Mark.”

  Elle breathed in deeply. “Right. Okay. Sorry for being so emotional.” She looked at Elias, lowered her voice. “Hormones. I’ve just come on.”

  Elias nodded. Too much information.

  “Mark came up to me when I was in that new designer outlet shop in the Riverside Centre. It’s called Opal. I was holding up a pair of super skinny jeans, and he said how they’d look great on me, so I said to him, ‘why don’t you wait while I try them on? You can tell me what you think.’”

  She stared at her phone, no doubt itching to pick it up. “I wouldn’t say that to just anyone. He was cute and charming and, like I said, I was really attracted to him. He was very complimentary about the jeans.”

  I’ll bet he was. “So, you said you spent a few hours together,” Steph chivvied.

  “Yes. He asked if I’d like to go for coffee. We went to Starby’s and talked for ages. He was so easy to get on with. We had loads in common. When it was time to go, he told me how much he enjoyed being with me. He said he knew a really good place to eat if I’d do him the honour of accompanying him. That’s how he put it. Sort of old-fashioned and gentlemanly.”

  “When you were talking, did he tell you much about himself? Did you pick up any sense that he was worried about anything?” Steph asked.

  “No. He didn’t seem worried. He told me he was a student at Lincoln Uni. He’s originally from Birmingham? Or Bradford? Somewhere beginning with a ‘B.’” Mark was from Barnsley. “Actually, he didn’t tell me that much about himself. I did most of the talking. He was a really good listener.”

  Steph imagined Elle would have relished the opportunity to talk about herself. She would be an easy pick-up, as Mark Ripley must have realised. All he was required to do was act the gentleman, show an interest, nod and listen. Was she being cynical in wondering about his intentions towards Elle? Had he genuinely liked her, or had he looked upon her as an easy sexual conquest?

  “Where did you eat?”

  “Lacey’s. Do you know it?” Steph nodded. It was on a street off the top end of the High Street. Popular with the young crowd.

  “And you stayed there all evening?”

  Elle shook her head, “Only until nine. Then we went to the pub.”

  “Were you both drinking?” she asked.

  “I drank more than Mark. He had a beer at the restaurant, then he switched to sparkling water. I had a couple of cocktails, well, maybe more than that. I kind of lost count. I was pretty drunk. Mark invited me back to his place, but I had to go home. I was working on Saturday and I had to get up really early. Mark was okay about it. We kissed while we waited for my cab to come. Oh, and we exchanged phone numbers.”

  “And took a selfie.”

  “Oh, yes. How did you know that? Oh, you must have seen Mark’s phone.” Elle picked up her phone. She showed them the picture. It was identical to the one on Mark’s.

  “We look good together, don’t we?” There was regret in her voice. For what? The loss of a young man’s life? Or the loss of a chance to be one half of a good-looking couple? Steph could take a pretty good guess at which.

  “And when you said goodbye, when the cab arrived, was that the last time you saw Mark?” she asked.

  “Yes. He ran along alongside the taxi for a bit, waving. It made me laugh.”

  Steph asked Elle for the name of the taxi company.

  Elle agreed to get in touch if she remembered anything else. Before leaving the interview room, she checked her face in a handbag mirror, frowning at some imagined imperfection. Then she touched up her lipstick. Steph wondered how long it would be before she deleted Mark’s image from her phone.

  They showed her out. “I suppose we now know Mark’s movements on the afternoon and evening leading up to his murder,” Steph said. “We can put in a Data Protection Act application to view the CCTV footage for all the places they visited on Friday afternoon and evening. Shopping centre, café, pub.”

  Elias nodded. “I’ll see to that, boss.”

  “Good. Anyone else come forward with information yet?”

  They had heard from a few people who had known Mark at the university. He had attended a seminar on Friday morning. One of the students in the group remembered him saying that he was going shopping for a birthday present for his sister in the afternoon. He had missed a four o’clock lecture.

  Elias shook his head. “Not so far, boss.”

  A little later, the cause of Mark’s death was confirmed. He had suffered a subdural haematoma, most likely caused by hitting his head on a stone step. He’d been unlucky, not all head injuries are so devastating. His other injuries, sustained from being repeatedly kicked on the arms, legs and torso, would not have been fatal.

  “It’s possible his attacker didn’t set out to kill him.”

  Steph considered Elias’s comment. “If that’s the case, it must have been a bit of a shock to wake up the next day and find out he’s wanted for murder.”

  Chapter Four

  Jane glanced at her fitness tracker. She’d bought it when she was preparing for the police selection fitness test and, initially, she’d found it fun. There was no doubt its morale-boosting messages had helped to motivate her. The reminders to get up and move every so often had been useful too. She hadn’t realised she sat about quite so much. But the novelty had soon worn off. She was damned if a glorified wristwatch was going to bully her into exercising every twenty minutes. It would be relegated to the back of the kitchen drawer as soon as she remembered to buy a proper watch.

 
She’d arrived at Newport slightly early for her second shift. This evening, she’d been paired with regular Police Constable Tim Sterne. Her nervousness must have shown, for Tim immediately reassured her. “Don’t worry. There’s not much chance of a repeat of last night. I can’t think of a time when anyone’s dealt with a murder two nights in a row.”

  Their shift started at ten. Soon afterwards, she and Tim were called to deal with a disturbance at a fish and chip shop. A drunk man had ordered two large bags of chips. After covering them in ketchup, he’d begun throwing them at the staff while using obscene and abusive language. He’d also refused to leave the shop when asked.

  Tim issued a warning as soon as they entered the shop. “Watch out! He’s armed.” A shower of chips landed at his feet. Jane ducked, then flinched as a pickled onion, big as a golf ball, whizzed past her ear.

  “Oi!” Tim yelled. “Put that jar of pickled onions down!”

  A member of staff raised his head above the countertop. The chip-thrower taunted him. “Hey! You! You the bloody cook? Should be bloody ashamed of yourself. Worst chips I’ve ever tasted.”

  He looked at Jane and Tim. “What are you two gawking at? If it’s fish ‘n’ chips you’re after, my brother-in-law’s got a great little takeaway in North Hykeham. The Happy Haddock Plaice. As in the fish. Get it? It’s a pun.”

  Just in case they’d missed it, he spelled it out — ‘P.L.A.I.C.E. This P.L.A.C.E doesn’t even come close.” He ate a chip, then licked the vinegar off his fingers.

  Well, Jane thought, at least he’s literate. She wondered what the man’s brother-in-law would make of his marketing strategy.

  Things came to a head when the man slipped on a squashed chip and went down hard on his tail-bone. The jar of onions tipped, spilling vinegar over his crotch. Onions radiated out across the floor in all directions. Jane and Tim moved in.

  Tim pulled the man to his feet. “How much have you had to drink, sir?”

  “I’m not pissed. What are you here for anyway? I haven’t done nothing wrong. Not my fault if this lot can’t cook proper fish and chips. It’s them you should be arresting. Bloody crime to serve up this greasy crap.” He tipped what was left in the bags over the floor.