Justice for the Damned (47 page)
“Don’t worry. I know I’ve got a big gob, but I can do things on the quiet too.”
Jim didn’t doubt that. Anna clearly had a talent for this kind of work – a talent that had been sucked into one long fruitless search for her missing sister. He felt a familiar surge of impotent anger at the thought of it. He handed her his card. “If you happen to find anything out, call me straight away.”
“I will.”
“I mean it, Anna. Straight away,” stressed Jim. “The same goes if anyone contacts you about the list. Don’t try to deal with it on your own. These are extremely dangerous people.”
Something about Jim’s tone reminded Anna of her dad. After Jessica’s abduction, Rick Young had become so smotheringly protective he’d barely been able to let Anna out of his sight. Even when she was at school, he’d phoned to check up on her dozens of times a day. In the end, she’d had to threaten to leave home unless he gave her some space. She held in a sigh. “You’ve read my blog, right? So you know about the type of people I’ve gone up against – rapists, abusers, murderers.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to patronise you, it’s just that…” Jim trailed off, his eyes growing distant. In his mind, he saw Margaret – the tears in her tights, the knife in her chest, the bloody voids where her eyes had been. After her death, he’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t risk any lives other than his own. And yet here he was, doing just the opposite. “I don’t want to be responsible for you getting hurt.”
“You’re not going to be, no matter what happens. If it makes you feel any better, I’ve got other copies of the photos of Villiers.” Anna took out her phone and showed Jim the photos. “I’d have put them online as soon as I worked out who the fucker was. And then I would’ve drawn fire just the same, but without you backing me up.”
Jim’s expression relaxed a little. Anna wasn’t Margaret. She knew exactly what she was getting into. He held out his hand. She shook it, sank the remainder of her pint and stood up. “I’ll be in touch.”
During the walk home, Anna spotted a roller door. On impulse, she tried the key in it. The lock didn’t turn. She stared at the key as if it was taunting her. Was it possible? Might this key have once been attached to the red devil keyring? The link was tenuous, if not existent only in her mind. She knew that, and yet for the first time in years she felt a fresh swell of motivation. “I’m going to find out where you fit, you little bastard,” she told the key. Then she continued on her way, eyeballing every garage she passed.
****
The graveyard was locked up for the night. Jim squeezed through a gap in the railings and traversed the ranks of graves, until he came to a grey marble headstone inscribed with simply ‘MARGARET HARRIS. 1957-2012. ALWAYS MISSED’.
Harris
. Jim had never gotten used to seeing her called by her maiden name. She’d always be Margaret Monahan to him.
“Hello, love,” he said, stooping to clear away the few leaves and weeds that had gathered on the grave since his previous visit. He was silent a long moment, head bowed as if in thought, before continuing, “I’ve done something. I don’t know if it’s the right thing. You’d know. You always knew…” He faded off into another extended silence.
He kissed his fingers and touched them to the headstone. “I’ll see you again soon, love.” Slowly, he stood. Slowly, he walked away.
THE SPIDER’S WEB
Justice for the Damned
Thirty years of fear. Thirty years of closed minds. It is all about to change.
A Sheffield prostitute has disappeared. With no family to fight for her, she’s just the latest in a long line of missing girls stretching back three decades. Nobody cares about their names. Nobody remembers their faces. They are the unloved, the damaged, the forgotten, the damned…
Amongst the women working South Yorkshire’s streets, rumours of a serial killer have long circulated. But the police’s top brass don’t want to know about it. Talk of serial killers panics the public and embarrasses the department…
But two very different detectives, each driven by their own dangerous obsessions, are being drawn into a murky world of perversion, murder and corruption that stretches from the streets to the corridors of power.
“Fast-moving action and lots of twists make this debut novel a most enjoyable read.”
The Times
for
Blood Guilt
“An absolutely fantastic read… I will definitely look forward to the next one.”
“A tough case for DI Jim Monaghan… demonstrating Cheetham’s gritty authority in a novel that grips the reader by the throat.”
Good Books Guide
B
EN
C
HEETHAM
’s short stories have been widely published in the UK, US and Australia. He self-published his first novel,
Blood Guilt
, in 2011. It sold over 100, 000 copies.
Ben lives in Sheffield, where he can usually be found racking his brain for the next provocative thriller in the Steel City series.
You can connect with Ben on:
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/BenCheethamBooks/
Twitter:
@Ben_CheethamUK
Blogspot:
www.bencheetham.blogspot.co.uk/
or via his website:
www.bencheetham.com/
Every city has its darkness. It may be buried deeper in some cities than others, but it’s there. Most people choose to look away from that darkness. A few force themselves to stare into it so that they can know their enemies. And they’re only too aware that the line which divides kidnap, rape, murder and corruption from love, family, home and happiness is thinner than you could ever imagine.
Sheffield is a city like any other. In the shadows of its factories, tower blocks, shopping centres and housing estates, a seemingly endless battle to hold that thin line is being fought by men like disgraced ex-cop Harlan Miller and jaded veteran detective Jim Monahan, and by women like beautiful but deeply damaged prostitute Angel. They all want one thing – justice. But what is justice? Each has their own ideas. Each is willing to risk their life to save others. And each is finding out that if you stare into darkness for too long, you may well end up forgetting what light looks like.
‘
Last night, eight-year old Ethan Reed was abducted at gunpoint from his home by an armed intruder. We are urging members of the public to get in touch. A coordinated search of the local area will be carried out
.’
Four years ago, Detective Inspector Harlan Miller killed someone. Now – divorced, alone, consumed by guilt – the world outside his prison walls holds little for him. Until, mere days after his release, an eight-year-old boy is abducted. Ethan Reed. The son of the man he killed.
Frustrated by a police search that finds nothing, driven to desperation by repeated appeals that bring in no new leads, Ethan’s mother knocks on the door of the man she has reason to hate most in the world. She has one question to ask – beg – of Harlan Miller. Find her little boy. Do whatever it takes.
Blood Guilt
is available
here
.
In Sheffield, a bankrupt businessman has murdered his family. It seems like an open-and-shut case: a desperate man resorting to desperate measures.
In Middlesbrough, a woman named Angel is heading south. She is a woman alone. A prostitute. Now a murderer. And she has only one thing on her mind: revenge.
Two crimes, a hundred miles apart, but a terrible secret connects them. And although the courts may not agree, DI Jim Monahan has all the proof he needs to bring down justice on a group of particularly vicious criminals…
Angel of Death
is available
here
.
Thirty years of fear. Thirty years of closed minds. It is all about to change.
A Sheffield prostitute has disappeared. With no family to fight for her, she’s just the latest in a long line of missing girls stretching back three decades. Nobody cares about their names. Nobody remembers their faces. They are the unloved, the damaged, the forgotten, the damned…
Amongst the women working South Yorkshire’s streets, rumours of a serial killer have long circulated. But the police’s top brass don’t want to know about it. Talk of serial killers panics the public and embarrasses the department…
But two very different detectives, each driven by their own dangerous obsessions, are being drawn into a murky world of perversion, murder and corruption that stretches from the streets to the corridors of power.
F
EBRUARY
14
TH
1993.
Sheffield United supporters remember it as the day their team won a famous victory against Manchester United. The date is lodged in Anna Young’s brain for a different reason. That was the day her thirteen-year-old sister, Jessica, was abducted…