Scared to Death (A Detective Kay Hunter novel) Read online

  ‘Okay. Keep me posted if you hear anything. Obviously, we need to interview the mother again as soon as possible, but we’ll play that by ear.’

  ‘Who’s on the team?’

  Sharp leaned back in his chair. ‘Yourself, Barnes, and Carys Miles – she’s not worked a case like this before, but she’s a hard worker, and I think she’ll be an asset.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘We’ll also get a couple of uniforms to act as exhibits officer and provide general administration assistance.’

  ‘Good.’

  Two uniforms processing the administrative side of the investigation would free up the detectives to pursue more pressing tasks.

  ‘There is one more thing,’ said Sharp, his eyes wary.

  She peered through her fringe at him. ‘Boss?’

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector Angus Larch is going to be following this one closely. Orders from the top. Sorry.’ He gestured to the paperwork covering his desk. ‘They’re anticipating how the media are going to react when they find out about this one, so they want it monitored from the start.’

  She swore under her breath, and he raised his eyebrow.

  ‘Is that going to be a problem, Hunter?’

  ‘No, sir. Not for me.’

  His mouth twitched. ‘Come on, then.’

  FIVE

  Kay returned to her desk, grabbed her notebook, water bottle and a spare pen, and made her way out of the room, along the corridor, and into the meeting space that had now been designated as a critical incident room. The IT experts had overhauled the meeting rooms a few years ago, ensuring that at any time there were enough phone sockets, internet connections and power boards to support a major investigation.

  Already, Ian Barnes and Carys Miles had taken up station at two desks they’d pushed together, while a young police constable, Gavin Piper, bent over a table, plugging in computers that would soon link the team to the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System database.

  Carys had joined the team six months ago, relocating from the Thames Valley force, and appeared to be settling in well. In her late twenties, her dark brown hair framed a heart-shaped face with green eyes that could bore into the most hardened of suspects, and Kay felt the woman had a promising career ahead of her.

  She hadn’t worked with Piper before, but Barnes had, and she knew the young constable was keen to pass his exams and become a detective. The blond streaks through his light-brown hair hinted at an outdoorsy-type, and Kay reckoned he’d be a safe pair of hands if she needed someone to depend upon. The broad-shouldered police officer had already turned heads among the younger members of the admin team since joining the busy town station, but he kept his personal life private and seemed oblivious to the attention.

  Kay waited a moment at the door, the excitement of a new investigation tempered with the thought that she owed it to Melanie’s mother to find out who had been responsible for her death, and that of Tony Richards.

  The next few hours would be critical, and she knew DCI Larch would push the team to deliver a result – and fast.

  She turned her head at the sound of footsteps behind her, and then stood to one side to let Sharp pass.

  ‘How are we doing?’

  ‘We’re ready.’

  She dumped her water bottle, notebook, and pen on a desk near the door, and walked over to the whiteboard the other PC, Debbie West, had pulled away from the wall.

  ‘Morning, Sarge,’ she said, as Kay approached.

  ‘Morning. Please, call me Kay. Have you got everything we need?’

  ‘Yes. Admin brought a stack of stationery up here half an hour ago,’ said Debbie, and pushed her hair out of her eyes. ‘I’ve chased IT to see if we can get an extra printer though.’

  ‘Good work.’

  Coloured marker pens sat on the shelf under the board, together with an eraser.

  Kay chucked the eraser onto a worktop that ran the length of the meeting room. Nothing would be rubbed out, not until the case was closed.

  It was just one of the rules she lived by, instilled in her by Sharp.

  Kay kept what she hoped was a neutral expression on her face as DCI Larch entered the room.

  It was the first time she’d been in close proximity to him since the Professional Standards committee had ruled out any action against her, and she wasn’t sure how he was going to behave.

  His eyes flickered over her, and his jaw tightened before he turned away and surveyed the rest of the team gathered around the whiteboard. He moved over to a desk near the door, pushed some paperwork to one side, and perched there, his ankles crossed and his arms folded casually across his chest.

  Kay exhaled, then blinked and unclenched her fists.

  Although the matter had been drawn to a close nearly four weeks ago, the distrust he’d held for her still stung. As did the effect of the rumours that had swirled around the station during that time. Of course, there were those who saw her predicament as an excuse to get the knives out. She’d certainly found out who she could trust, and who would stand by her assertions of innocence after the whole debacle.

  ‘Focus,’ she muttered to herself.

  ‘BEFORE HE COLLAPSED, Tony Richards stated that the kidnapper had warned them not to go to the police, otherwise he’d hurt Melanie,’ said Barnes. ‘During the second phone call they received after Melanie was taken, she screamed – Tony said it wasn’t a scream of someone who was scared. She was hurt.’

  ‘Lucas reported that the little finger on her right hand had been severed,’ said Kay. ‘It appears that the suspect used a knife, but it wasn’t a clean job. He’ll have more detail after the post mortem.’

  The room fell silent for a moment.

  ‘Bastard,’ murmured one of the uniformed officers.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Sharp. ‘Right. Immediate thoughts?’

  ‘There are no reports of anything like this happening locally before,’ said Carys. ‘We’re waiting to hear back about national cases.’

  ‘Perhaps a gang new to the area?’ suggested Barnes. ‘Trying to make an impact?’

  Sharp turned to the whiteboard, and spoke over his shoulder as he wrote. ‘Whoever it is will be panicking. A kidnapping gone wrong like this is unusual. Especially with the father dying as well.’

  ‘Twenty thousand pounds isn’t a lot of money though, boss,’ said Kay.

  A few heads swivelled to look at her, but she kept her eyes on the whiteboard.

  ‘Go on,’ said Sharp.

  ‘Well, initial enquiries indicate Yvonne Richards’ business is doing well. They live in a nice house – and they were able to get the money together relatively quickly without alerting anyone. Surely, if the kidnapper was watching them for a while to work out a routine, he or she would have latched onto the fact they were well off, and would’ve asked for more?’

  ‘Keep going.’ Sharp said.

  ‘I can’t help thinking this wasn’t simply a kidnapping. Maybe Melanie’s death was deliberate.’

  ‘Murder, rather than a kidnapping gone wrong, you mean.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She shrugged. ‘I keep wondering if there’s more to this than what we’re seeing at the moment.’

  Sharp nodded, and wrote her suggestion on the whiteboard before drawing a question mark next to it. ‘Fair point. Anyone else?’

  The room fell silent.

  ‘All right,’ he continued. ‘It’s early days. There’s going to be a lot of information coming in. Based on what we have, I want two separate lines of enquiry until one gets ruled out. DS Hunter, I want you leading the angle of non-monetary gain – find out if it’s personal, rather than opportunistic. Any bad debts, threats to the family, grudges against them with regard to the business. Carys, you’ll lead the monetary angle, and keep Kay up to date with anything you find. I want everyone back here at six o’clock daily for a full update, and we’ll reconvene at eight o’clock every morning. Any questions?’

  The room remained silent.

  Sharp checke
d his watch, and then turned to DCI Larch. ‘Anything you’d like to add?’

  ‘Thanks, Sharp,’ said Larch, and stepped forward. ‘A murder of any kind is a tragedy,’ he said, his voice even. ‘However, when it involves a young girl, and the effect of that murder results in her father dying…’ He met each of the officers’ gazes in turn, ‘I can’t think of anything more horrific.’ He turned his attention to Sharp. ‘I’ll make some phone calls; see what I can do to get you more resources.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sharp tossed the whiteboard pen onto a desk next to where he stood. ‘Right, everyone. Go make the necessary phone calls to your families, let them know they’re not going to be seeing very much of you for a while. We’re going to be in for some long hours.’

  SIX

  ‘What have you found out about the building Melanie’s body was found in?’

  Kay sipped her coffee, and stared at the aerial map pinned to the wall with the industrial estate at its centre, then turned and faced the team.

  ‘Until two years ago, there was a biosciences company based there.’ Carys leafed through some pages on her desk. ‘Although they had a licence to conduct animal testing for the purposes of evaluating the toxicity of a new drug, they also had dealings with the cosmetic industry – high-end make-up products, shampoos – things like that.’

  ‘Has it been abandoned since they left?’

  The detective nodded, and held up a page. ‘They closed up shop twelve months before their German head office put out a press release saying they were entering into voluntary administration. From the records online, it looks like the cosmetics end of their business was propping up the biosciences half. After the global financial crisis, they never really recovered – people stopped buying high-end goods, discovered good cheap alternatives, and never went back.’ She tossed the page aside. ‘The building never got re-leased.’

  ‘What about security patrols?’

  ‘I spoke to the agency that lets the buildings on the estate – apparently, after the last tenant vacated, the landlord decided to cancel the patrols. Too expensive, given he couldn’t pass on a portion of the costs to a new tenant.’

  ‘Did they give you a list of key holders to the property?’

  ‘Working through it now.’

  Kay turned to the young PC. ‘Gavin. How are you progressing with getting hold of the CCTV footage?’

  ‘It’s patchy, Sarge. A lot of the cameras have been vandalised over the years, and I guess because there are no tenants in the buildings, the cameras haven’t been replaced.’

  ‘Noted. Do what you can to chase it up. And we’re going to be working together for a while, so why don’t you call me Kay while we’re here? We’ll leave the formalities outside this room.’

  He nodded in response.

  ‘What was the outcome of the search of the money drop?’ Her eyes swept the room, then fell on Barnes as he raised his hand.

  ‘Ian?’

  ‘Forensics took what fingerprints they could from the post box. They said the surface near the posting slot was sprayed with bleach though.’

  ‘Damn.’ She sighed. ‘Let me know if they come up with anything we can use. The sooner we can confirm forensics for both crime scenes, even if it’s fragmented information until they have the whole picture, I want to know.’

  ‘Sarge.’

  ‘Right. Kidnapping timeline.’ She turned back to the whiteboard, and picked up one of the pens. She drew a line across the top, and marked off five sections. ‘Melanie was taken on Tuesday,’ she said, writing in the first box on the left. ‘Her parents didn’t arrive back from holiday until three days later.’ She marked an ‘x’ in the middle box. ‘They received a call that night from the kidnapper, giving them their instructions.’ She scribbled in the last box, and recapped the pen before facing her team once more. ‘Thirty-six hours later, Melanie was dead.’

  She was met with silence as all eyes fell to the right-hand side of the whiteboard. She flipped open her notebook, and skimmed through the brief interview she’d had with Yvonne at the crime scene.

  ‘What time on Friday night did Tony Richards say they received the first call, Ian?’

  Barnes cleared his throat. ‘Seven o’clock. Their taxi dropped them off at home that afternoon, and they were about to start cooking dinner. Tony said they fully expected Melanie to turn up any minute – she knew they’d be home from holiday, and they’d arranged to have a family meal together at eight o’clock.’

  ‘So Melanie told her kidnapper the routine?’ said Gavin.

  ‘Or he was watching the house,’ said Kay. She gestured to Barnes. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Tony’s mobile rang, he answered it, and the kidnapper asked if he and Yvonne were alone in the house.’

  Kay frowned. ‘Either he didn’t have eyes on the house then – or he was testing them.’

  ‘Tony confirmed they were alone, and then he was told to put the phone on speaker so Yvonne could hear.’

  ‘Yvonne said he waited until Tony switched to speakerphone before stating he had Melanie,’ said Kay. ‘According to her, he said “I have your daughter. If you want to see her alive again, follow these instructions”. He then went on to tell them to have twenty thousand pounds in used ten- and twenty-pound notes available within thirty-six hours.’

  ‘It’s strange he gave them so long to get the money together,’ said Gavin, scratching his chin.

  ‘Most banks won’t let you withdraw more than a few thousand at a time,’ said Kay.

  ‘Or he wasn’t ready,’ said Carys.

  ‘Could be, though the way he had everything set up at the site, he looked pretty organised to me,’ said Kay. She checked her watch. ‘I’m going to head over to the hospital after this. See if the doctors will let me talk to Yvonne. At least that way, we might have more to work with when we reconvene here in the morning.’

  ‘What if he was working with someone else?’ said Barnes. ‘What if he had to liaise with them to arrange the collection of the money?’

  Kay wagged her finger at him. ‘Good point.’ She turned and scribbled on the whiteboard. ‘Yvonne said the next call came the next day. They’d been instructed to leave the house only to go to the bank, and not to phone the police, or anyone else for help if they wanted to see Melanie again. The kidnapper phoned at exactly the same time as before, to ask if they had the money. Then he said he’d phone the next day with further instructions.’

  ‘At which point, Tony said Yvonne grabbed the phone from him, and screamed at the kidnapper. Said she told him to let Melanie go,’ said Barnes. He flicked his notebook shut. ‘That’s when Tony says the kidnapper made Melanie scream.’

  ‘The drop off,’ said Kay. ‘This morning. What went wrong?’ she mused.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Barnes. ‘Tony said they got a phone call at five forty-five this morning. They followed the kidnapper’s instructions. Put the twenty thousand pounds in a padded envelope, and placed it in the opening of the post box on Channing Lane before driving away. They were told to wait in a library car park about a twenty-minute drive from the drop-off point for another call.’

  ‘Yvonne Richards stated that they received a message from the kidnapper on Tony’s mobile phone that told them where to find Melanie.’

  ‘How far away were they?’ said Carys.

  ‘The other side of Maidstone.’ Kay chewed her lip. ‘They were never going to make it. Not from there.’

  SEVEN

  Kay swung the battered pool vehicle into the last remaining space of the hospital car park, and tried not to look at the driver of the BMW who glared at her through his windscreen before powering away.

  She locked the door, hurried over to the ticket machine, and jammed the last of her loose change into the slot before ripping the paper ticket from its housing.

  After she’d thrown it onto the dashboard, she weaved between five rows of parked cars, and ran through the afternoon’s events in her mind once more.

  The main building of t
he hospital loomed above her. Built in the early 1980s, the structure had been modernised and expanded over time, with specialist units for oncology and physiotherapy now housed in their own low-lying buildings to either side of the original footprint.

  A breeze lifted the collar of her blouse as she approached the entrance to the building, sending a chill down her spine as she recalled the teenage girl.

  She clenched her fist tighter around her bag, and shoved the door open with her free hand.

  After speaking with a woman on reception, she made her way over to the lifts.

  All around her, the scent of disinfectant and worry permeated her senses. Muted voices tumbled from partly closed doors, and somewhere further along the ground floor, a child cried.

  She bit her lip, forced herself forward, and kept her eyes downcast.

  She knew it was unlikely any of the staff would recognise her; they saw so many patients every day, and she hadn’t told them her occupation, only that her husband was a vet. They had quietly congratulated him; his quick thinking in getting her to hospital when he did, meant they could operate before her life was endangered further.

  Their baby girl hadn’t survived.

  She clenched her fist, and forced herself to concentrate. She’d found out she was pregnant only a few weeks before the miscarriage. Accidental, the pregnancy had caused shock, which gradually turned to excitement as she’d begun to make plans for the future.

  All of that had been snatched away.

  Only a few weeks in the womb, their baby didn’t stand a chance. The consultant who met with them afterwards had explained in guarded tones that the miscarriage had probably been brought on by stress.

  Neither she nor Adam had mentioned the Professional Standards investigation that had begun the previous week.

  Nor had they mentioned that her whole career lay in the balance, and that criminal charges were threatened against her.

  Instead, they’d thanked him, and returned to their home, then battened down and awaited the results of the investigation while Kay recuperated and tried not to think of the children she’d never be able to have.