Killing for Keeps (3 page)

O
n the Silverlink Industrial Estate, DCI Kate Daniels had just finished overseeing a delicate and ghastly operation. Having called upon the Fire Service to jack up the Mercedes
to enable crime-scene investigators to photograph her victim in situ, she’d looked on as the body was extricated from the underside of the vehicle and handed over to mortuary staff for
transfer to Newcastle’s city morgue.

The body-bag was zipped up, laid on a stretcher and loaded into a black van. Hank Gormley waved it forward, instructing a uniformed colleague to follow in a panda car. It was important to
preserve continuity until the cadaver was in the care of Tim Stanton, who was standing by to carry out an urgent post-mortem. Police tape and cones were lifted, allowing the vehicles through inner
and outer cordons, where they were joined by a Traffic car, its driver engaging blues and twos to ease the journey.

As the mini-convoy disappeared, Kate turned to face Hank.

‘What was the name of our witness?’ she asked.

‘David Prentice. Forty-eight-year-old widower. No form. Lives on Benton Park Road. Father of two, grandfather of four.’ He pointed to a sign behind them:
JMR Air Conditioning
& Refrigeration Services
. ‘He’s in there, waiting for you.’

Kate found the man at his desk in the security office, hands cupped round a mug of sweet tea, a half-smoked cigarette dangling from his lips. He stubbed it out and stood up as she walked in. It
was as if the room was shrouded in fog. Bizarrely, it had no air conditioning. Without asking permission, the DCI opened the window to let the smoke out. Then she sat down, taking the weight off
her aching feet. The man looked grey. Was it any wonder? She wasn’t feeling too hot herself.

‘I’m DCI Kate Daniels. Are you up to answering questions, sir?’

‘To be honest, I’d rather go home. I’m feeling a bit shaky.’

‘That’s entirely understandable. Finding a body must have been harrowing for you, especially in the dead of night.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

He was a dead ringer for Kate’s old guv’nor who was now the head of CID; a little younger perhaps, but the face was the same shape, with a generous mouth and greying hair at his
temples. They could’ve been brothers, except Prentice was quaking in his uniformed boots and Detective Chief Superintendent Bright would never do that, no matter how unpleasant the
circumstances. Then again, the security guard had probably never seen so much as an angry dog in his whole career, much less had to deal with one.

‘I won’t keep you long, I promise.’ Kate gave a smile of encouragement. ‘The sooner we get it over with, the sooner you can go home to your bed. It would help if you
could tell me everything you know, a blow-by-blow account of your movements since you came on duty, including how and when you discovered the body. It’s very important to establish what
happened here so I can start looking for those responsible.’

Prentice took a deep breath. ‘I started at ten o’clock. It was a normal, boring shift until I noticed the van a few minutes before five, after leaving the office for a moment or
two.’

‘Is that allowed?’ Kate asked.

‘It was that or piss in a bucket. Forgive the language, I—’

‘Needs must, eh?’ Another smile. Kate pointed at a hard-backed ledger on his desk. ‘Is that your duty log?’

He nodded.

‘May I see it please?’

Prentice pushed it towards her. He looked on as she opened it up and turned to the relevant page. The writing was neat but so small she was forced to use her reading specs. Scanning the entries,
she noted that he’d made a tour of the perimeter fence every hour throughout the night until four a.m. The five o’clock patrol remained blank.

Picking up on her concern, Prentice was at pains to point out that he hadn’t completed that circuit because he was too busy investigating the mystery van.

‘That’s when you called us?’

Sweating profusely, he nodded.

Kate shifted her attention from the man to a desk littered with paraphernalia: a half-completed crossword, an Open University pamphlet, a framed photograph of four grinning schoolboys she
assumed were his grandchildren, a few jottings on a notepad and some literature on photography.

Oh God!

Along with a feeling of déjà vu, a young woman appeared in Kate’s head: an amateur photographer she’d come across in a previous case who’d tried to cash in by
selling images of a dead man to the press. That was the way things were these days; everyone carried a camera in their pocket, the means with which to capture a moment in time, no matter how
miserable. People saw it as fair game. Images that sold newspapers were highly prized. Sadly, that particular photographer had paid the ultimate price, silenced for good by someone who didn’t
want their face made public.

‘Keen photographer, are you sir?’ Kate took in an enthusiastic nod. ‘Take any snaps while you were outside? Because, if you did, I’d like the film and the
camera.’

‘I don’t have one with me.’

‘Mobile phone?’

‘I didn’t take any pictures.’

‘That’s fine.’ Kate sent a warning shot across the desk. ‘I just need to be sure. The incident I’m investigating is not one that should end up in the public domain.
If that were to happen, you should understand that there would be consequences.’

‘Check it if you don’t believe me.’ He pushed his mobile across the desk. ‘There’s nothing on it, I swear.’

‘I’ll take your word for it.’

Thanking her, Prentice shuddered as if something with more than two legs had walked across his skin. ‘To be honest, I was so spooked when I realized what I’d found that I bolted back
here. I dialled 999 in case he was, y’know, still alive. It never occurred to me to get my camera out. I’m no ghoul, Inspector.’ He paused for thought. ‘Not that I thought
he could be – alive, I mean. But I’m no doctor, am I? You hear about people surviving terrible accidents.’

He hadn’t been told.

Kate tried to find the right words with which to convey the unpalatable truth. ‘Mr Prentice, I’m not here about a terrible accident. This is a clear-cut case of murder. As despicable
as it sounds, what you witnessed tonight was a deliberate act.’

‘What?’ He looked horrified.

‘I’m afraid so. I’m sure you’ll appreciate how serious that is and why I need your full cooperation.’ Unfortunately, Kate was destined not to get it.

Prentice immediately clammed up, floored by the realization that whoever she was after knew where he worked and when they could find him alone on the premises. Having seen what they were capable
of, he had no doubt they would silence a witness without a second thought.

N
o amount of gentle persuasion made a difference. The witness was frightened. He had a right to be. Kate drove slowly through the traffic on the way back to the city centre.
She was tired and under pressure but, if she were being perfectly honest, enjoying the adrenalin rush of a new enquiry, even though this one was more difficult to stomach than most. She could tell
Hank felt it too. He was as high as a kite, on the phone to their guv’nor, Detective Superintendent Ron Naylor.

‘The news isn’t all grim,’ he was saying. ‘We already have a victim ID.’

Tuning him out, Kate turned her attention to the case generally. Identifying the victim was something she hadn’t thought possible a couple of hours ago. But thanks to the timely
intervention of crime-scene investigators, she was in possession of the most vital piece of evidence an SIO needs in the first few hours of a new case. Prints lifted at the scene matched some
already on the database. That was good. The name of the person to whom they belonged was not. In fact, it was quite the opposite: enough to strike fear into the heart of most detectives, whether or
not they knew the man personally. His reputation was legendary in the Northumbria force area.

Repercussions would surely follow.

Kate drove on, hoping she didn’t have a turf war on her hands.

Having finished his call, Hank had gone quiet. A worrying development, unheard of almost. Not only was he not talking, he wasn’t catching up on lost sleep either, something he did at every
opportunity. Normally, he’d be hanging like a bat from his seat belt by now. The horrific nature of this case had got to him.

‘Do yourself a favour,’ she said. ‘Don’t think about it.’

‘Since when did you take up mind-reading?’ he asked.

She glanced sideways, a wry smile on her face. ‘Try zoning out the images. It’ll allow you to concentrate on the case rather than the pain of it, if that makes sense.’

‘You do that?’

‘Every time.’

‘Does it help?’

‘We’re humans too, Hank.’

‘Nice sidestep. I notice you didn’t answer the question.’

‘Complete detachment would mean we were robots.’ Kate kept her eyes on the road. ‘It may surprise you to learn that we are allowed to feel. In fact, it’s obligatory.
Number one on my list of coping strategies. It makes me try all the harder to catch the bad guys.’

There was another way she handled the nasty stuff and she’d already made up her mind to make the call as soon as the briefing was over, the murder enquiry underway. She’d talk it
through with her friend and confidante, criminal profiler Jo Soulsby. Their discussion would take the form of a professional debrief almost. It wouldn’t change a thing, but afterwards
she’d feel a little less like she was dying inside.

Hank was still in a bad place. ‘It’s beyond me how Stanton manages. At least we don’t have to look at it twenty-four seven.’

‘Did I ever tell you Jo believes in meditation?’ Kate said. ‘You should try it sometime.’

‘No offence, but that’s bollocks.’ It wasn’t like him to be so dismissive. He liked Jo a lot, respected what she did for a living, valued the contribution she’d
made since her secondment to the Murder Investigation Team.

‘I was a sceptic too once,’ Kate said.

Another wave of sorrow washed over her.

Who was she trying to kid?

B
y the time they reached the station, Naylor had set the wheels in motion. The incident suite was full of detectives and civilian personnel awaiting instructions from the DCI,
all leave over the coming bank holiday weekend cancelled at short notice. No one minded. That was just the way it was. In fact, some welcomed the opportunity for overtime, an occurrence far less
frequent than it used to be.

Taking her own advice, Kate forced herself to concentrate on procedure rather than dwelling on images she wished she’d never seen. Sharing the name of the deceased with DC Lisa Carmichael,
advising her that crime-scene photographs were available for upload, she set her to work immediately, excusing her from the briefing, before turning to face the squad.

‘Right, ladies and gents, can we have some quiet please?’ She waited for the hum of voices to die down. ‘We’ve got a distressing torture case on our hands. Nominal One is
John Allen. That is
the
John Allen, for those of you in the know.’

There were a few raised eyebrows in the room.

Kate moved on. ‘For the benefit of those new to the squad, he’s a villain from a criminal family going back generations. He’s also well known to the Serious Organized Crime
Agency. Along with his brother and equally obnoxious mates, John Allen has dabbled in anything and everything, specializing in stealing high-end cars to order, selling them on, shipping them
abroad. A very lucrative line of business it was too. Enough to buy them a pretty fancy lifestyle—’

‘Not any more,’ Hank said drily.

Kate glanced at the murder wall. On one side of a state-of-the-art digital screen, John Allen’s name had appeared in large capital letters, alongside his age (twenty-nine), date of birth,
address when last arrested, significant others and known associates. Underneath was a police mugshot Carmichael had lifted from the PNC. On the other side of the screen, horrific images were
uploading; a macabre illustration of what Kate had seen at dawn on a deserted street a few miles east of the station.

The state of the body was such that several officers dropped their heads on one side, trying to work out which way was up: DS Paul Robson, DCs Neil Maxwell and Andy Brown among them. Andy, the
quiet one of the three, grimaced as if he’d eaten a lemon whole. Silence spread throughout the room, except for the tap-tapping of Carmichael’s fingers as they flew over her computer
keys. The young DC had her head down as usual, so deep in concentration she was oblivious to the reaction her efforts were having on the rest of a team coming to terms with what was being
shown.

‘Let me be clear here,’ the DCI said. ‘No matter what criminal activities Allen instigated in his lifetime, he didn’t deserve to end his days the way he did. My immediate
concern is that his associates may take the law into their own hands, exact some form of retribution on those responsible for his death. Our first priority therefore is to find his brother Terry
before all hell breaks loose.’

‘We just did,’ a voice behind her said.

All eyes were on the door.

Two uniformed police officers were standing on the threshold, the older a male sergeant most of them had known for years. ‘Excuse the interruption, ma’am.’ He held up an
incident report. ‘But this concerns you.’

‘Did you bring Terry in?’ Kate asked.

She had good reason to jump to this conclusion. As soon as victim ID was confirmed, she’d turned her attention to his relatives, in particular the delivery of a death message, a job easier
said than done for two reasons: the Allens were antagonistic towards the police and their criminal lifestyle meant they moved around a lot. When they couldn’t be found, she’d issued an
action to trace next of kin.

‘No,’ the sergeant said. ‘Terry Allen is also in the morgue.’

‘What? Are you serious?’

‘Deadly, no pun intended.’

For a moment, no one spoke. Then the silence was broken by rumblings of
Jesus Christ, good riddance
and other harsh words directed at the younger Allen brother. Kate asked for
attention, giving the officer the opportunity to explain his attendance at the RVI, the fact that he’d personally identified Terry, an offender he’d arrested on several occasions, as
the deceased patient who’d been found in a hospital corridor.

‘You’re absolutely sure it was him?’ Kate asked.

The sergeant was nodding. ‘His wallet and driving licence were in his pocket. We made some tentative enquiries, called out the duty pathologist. Apart from injuries we could see for
ourselves – all bar one of his fingers were missing – the doc confirmed he’d been stabbed several times in the back. It’s definitely a murder case, linked to the one
you’re already dealing with, unless you believe in coincidence. I suspect you don’t.’

Two brothers . . .

Tortured to death on the same night . . .

Not for a moment did Kate believe this was a coincidence. Whoever killed the Allen brothers was switched wrong – a malicious sadist. She dreaded what would happen when word got out to
family and associates. Like it or not, as SIO she had no right to withhold cause of death even in cases like this one, where the family had a history of dispensing their own brand of justice. She
felt sure they would close ranks, put the shutters up and use any means at their disposal to track down those responsible. It wasn’t hard to imagine what would happen next. She knew it
wouldn’t be pretty.