No Time to Die_a thrilling CSI mystery Read online

  She swung the covers aside and climbed out of bed and hurried to get inside yesterday’s clothes that she’d thrown over the back of the chair. She had no time for showers and tarting up her hair this morning, not even time to get out some fresh clothes – she just wanted to be out of this house. ‘Nonsense, Brian,’ getting as far away from this creep as quickly as possible was the only priority right now, ‘I’m just worried about this job I’m on. It’s going wrong, I can feel it,’ and how the thought of never coming back thrilled her, but how the thought of being stopped by him scared the life out of her, ‘and if I don’t act soon, then…’

  ‘Then what?’

  She was dressed now, mouth felt claggy still, eyes full of sleep still, but she had to leave, had to get away from him. It had become progressively harder to stay in the same room as him, but if he suspected her feelings for him, her true feelings – how could he not, she thought – then he would cage her up and chain her to the sodding wall and torture her until she died.

  She shrugged. ‘Don’t really want to think of that.’ She smiled. And then she surprised herself, as she wrapped her arms around him, sank her face into the side of his neck and kissed him. There was a part of her brain that had shut down, the tender part; it had closed for business so that the survival part of her brain could score points with Brian, so it could earn her safe passage away from him, at least temporarily. And had she not done that, showed some counterfeit affection, she may not even have made it out of the front door.

  As it was, he returned the hug, even pulled away slightly so he could look at her, searching the feigned affection in her actor’s eyes, and then he kissed her.

  The survival part of her brain went into emergency mode, and she was able to return the kiss, blotting out the night spent in cold water in the bathtub, blotting out him fucking his bit on the side. Blotting out the fact she was scared of him, that she hated him, that she detested him.

  She pulled away then and smiled up at him, and she could tell he was convinced by it all. Her only concern now was that he’d force her to undress again and climb back into bed. She turned away before he had the chance, but he caught her by the arm, and she felt like screaming. Her heart pummelled, the needle on the Emergency Department gauge wavered around the red segment of the dial, and she was ready to collapse and just give in.

  ‘You just be careful out there,’ he said. And he appeared to say it with sincerity.

  Bollocks, she thought.

  ‘Be home on time, eh?’

  She nodded. ‘Do my best.’

  ‘I mean it. You don’t want another night in the bath, Rosaline, do you?’

  And then she was gone, down the stairs, out of the front door, car keys rattling in her shaking hand, and she shuffled saliva around her mouth, cleaning away the taste of him, before spitting it all out on the grass.

  — Two —

  He’s going to kill me. That was her overriding thought as she swiped her card and let herself into the main office at a little before seven-thirty. There were lights on in Westmoreland’s office and in Jeffery’s too. Even farther along the office, she could see a glow through the blinds in Cooper’s office as well. But it all meant roughly nothing to her as she took her seat and turned on the computer, staring out of the window into the car park below.

  Rain hit the window and trailed yesterday’s dirt down it so that the muddy smear on the sill outside shimmered.

  There was a feeling of hopelessness in Ros’s mind now; it had persisted throughout yesterday, and had coalesced overnight, and now it was almost solid, like the pool of mud on the sill. And it dragged her down into a darkness, a blackness where nothing else really mattered. Her fear was for Eddie – entirely. Of course, the troubles at home were real too, they ring-fenced her fear for Eddie with a thousand shiny spears, but the blackness was more powerful and infinitely more severe.

  ‘Ros?’

  Her head snapped around, and she saw Jeffery approaching. He looked like he hadn’t slept much either. At least he had fresh clothes on this morning, a new tie, dark blue – conservative, like his demeanour, and his shoes, as always, shone, but his eyes did not. He looked solemn.

  ‘News?’

  He sat next to her, no smile, no How are you? just an appraising stare. ‘I hate to say it, but you look like shit.’

  ‘Any news?’

  ‘Go take a shower downstairs. Get yourself cleaned up. I’m sending out for breakfast.’

  ‘Jeffery. Answer the fucking question,’ she growled at him through clenched teeth.

  He closed in, no hint of compliance in his eyes. ‘Go. Shower. Now.’ And then he stood up and walked away.

  — Three —

  Lisa Westmoreland was in a state of near paralysis. Like the others in the office, she had snatched minutes of sleep in what turned out to be a very long night for her. She had a fitful slumber that consisted of a fairground ride where each segment of its journey passed through one nightmare after another, rotating slowly so she got the full experience each time. She got her money’s worth.

  In one segment, Eddie would pop up and ask her if she was enjoying the ride, big smile on his face and a thorn pinning his top lip into his right nostril – looked like a permanent sneer, looked like an exaggerated impression of Elvis, and of course, he could blink in one eye only because the other was pinned open. Tears streamed down his face, and they’d mingled with blood to produce a water-smear like running red mascara after a crying fit. His eyes glared at her with a redness in their centres, a glow reserved for some kind of robot from those sci-fi films, like a Terminator. He was grotesque, and she couldn’t shake the image no matter how hard she tried. Eddie would put his drunken arm around her and ask her why she’d fucked about with his evidence like that.

  He’d stood next to her in Crosby’s kitchen and watched one of his men use the liquid nitrogen from a van they’d pulled around the back. They took a tamper-proof evidence bag – the one bearing Eddie’s signature, the one with a swab inside it from Tony Lambert’s bedroom carpet – and they’d wafted it in and out of a metal container with liquid nitrogen pouring over the sides like an eerie spectral vision of the Niagara Falls.

  Eventually, the bag had cracked open at the seal, the adhesive – super strong under normal temperatures and, of course, tamper-proof – had parted, and the swab inside fell out onto the worktop. The bag now was super fragile, it would snap if touched too hard, had become brittle enough to shatter if subjected to extremes of temperature variation, and would remain so until it slowly came back up to room temperature again. So, one guy had kept it hovering inside the container without actually immersing it, while another guy had slowly slid inside it another swab, pre-prepared by Lisa.

  She could see Eddie in Slade’s lounge now; he was on the floor and had been kicked in the side, and he was slurring his words as though pissed. Then the door had opened further, and Eddie saw her, and his eyes opened wide in recognition, and that’s when her heart had stepped up a notch. But by then it had been too late to step back out of the way – the damage was done. Eddie had just signed his own life away. And that’s when Slade invited her into the lounge.

  But then, Eddie was right beside her again; he had nudged her, thumbs up, ‘Feckin good job,’ he’d said. He spoke and a dribble of saliva splashed onto the floor because he couldn’t close his mouth properly. ‘You’ve really thought thith through,’ he slurred.

  And she had. But it was all Eddie’s fault. If he’d stayed away from Tony’s scene, none of this, none of it, need ever have happened.

  And that’s when the carousel spun majestically around a little further, and the nightmare had continued on to another scene. This one featured bright sunlight bouncing off the white walls of a pub called The Magic Carousel; bright enough for her to be squinting, shielding her eyes from the brightness with a hand like she was giving a permanent salute to the man she stood alone with. His name was Slade Crosby, and he was a fat bearded man like a Hell’s Angel, but he
didn’t wear oil-stained denim and a scratched leather jacket with spikes all over it. He wore jeans and boots, but with a shirt and cotton jacket. He wore aviator shades so she couldn’t read his eyes.

  And she was speaking to him as though she trusted him. And she knew she couldn’t. He was a gangster, and you could never trust a gangster. Gangsters worked towards their own ends, and once those had been satisfied, there was little chance your own piece of the deal would be concluded correctly. But she’d had little choice.

  A young woman had approached her several weeks prior to this meeting. The young woman though had grown wide, not fat yet, but wide. She’d become incredibly less beautiful than she’d remembered; now she was clad in black leather, black-painted nails, black lipstick and black eye-liner. A dozen years ago, about two years before the young woman went to jail, she’d been lithe, sensual and beautiful in every department. She could have been a model, she was fit, as the saying went, but she wasn’t a model, she was a copper, like Lisa. They’d gone through probation together and became lovers the night before they had graduated.

  Of course, they didn’t graduate by themselves. Back then, there’d been a healthy intake of new police officers. Fifty people in all, four waves of probationer officers. And during the twenty-six weeks they’d spent together, a good few of them had become close friends. Lisa and this one young lady called Sophie, in particular. But fringing them, good enough friends to be invited on nights out and parties at each other’s houses, were several others. In particular, there was a guy called Tony Lambert, distinctive because of the gap between his front teeth that was wide enough to park a bike in. He’d disappeared off the radar not long after graduation. He’d gone to work out of Stainbeck police station in Leeds, and then he disappeared, rumoured to have been picked up by special branch – and Christ knew what happened to people when they went into the secret squirrel world of plain-clothes.

  But in the case of Tony Lambert, Lisa knew exactly what had become of him because over Slade’s shoulder, she could see him right now. He was squinting against the sunlight too, drawing his lips back as he screwed up his eyes, showing the gap between his front teeth.

  At first, she hadn’t really noticed him; she was involved in some rather fragile negotiations with Slade. But then she’d seen him, really seen, really paid him some attention, and she was utterly convinced it was him. She had problems bringing his name to mind at first. She got the Tony part immediately, but the surname evaded her.

  ‘She’s into me for fifty grand,’ she whispered to Slade. Of course, that wasn’t necessarily the truth – Sophie had said she was kidding. But the point of it all was the threat, at least that’s how Lisa perceived it: a threat. And that was good enough reason to be here right now, cutting a deal with a bastard. Didn’t matter what currency.

  Slade’s eyebrows had risen at that. A handsome figure.

  ‘I’ve no chance of raising it.’

  ‘You shouldn’t anyway,’ he said. ‘What’s to stop her coming back for more? You’d never be free of her.’

  ‘That’s where you come in.’

  ‘Why would I want a piece of that?’

  ‘Because I’m going to get Blake off a charge of rape for you.’

  Slade slid his aviators up his head, looked at her through deep brown eyes, shadowed crow-feet to the sides. ‘I’m listening.’

  And she’d gone on to state how she’d risk her career to lose some evidence, namely semen, recovered from the scene. When it went to court and CPS couldn’t produce, they’d have to cancel the hearing or risk it being thrown out anyway.

  Slade had warmed to the idea, of course, and he’d agreed to take care of Sophie for her. But then, he’d surprised her by asking how he could trust her. A fair question when you actually stopped and thought about it.

  ‘You want to know if you can trust me?’ she’d asked. He nodded. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Don’t look around, but the man who drove you here today. Do you know him?’

  ‘Course I do. He’s one of my men. Why?’

  ‘Last I heard he worked for special branch. Probably into Crime Division by now.’

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘Name’s Tony…’ and there, she paused for a moment, because it still wouldn’t come; it was still just out of reach, and then, like a penny dancing down the board, striking pins left and right at the fairground, it landed in her hand, and she said, ‘Lambert. Been on the force for twelve years. Same as me.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Joined the same time as I did. He doesn’t know I’ve seen him, but I know he recognises me. You should ask him.’

  Slade was quiet. Thinking. ‘Lambert?’

  ‘It’s what I know him as, yes.’

  Slade pulled the aviators back down over his eyes again.

  ‘So, you trust me now? We have a deal?’

  It turned out they did indeed have a deal. And Tony had died as a result of it. Turns out his wife had too. And Lisa was sorry about that. No, really, she was; she didn’t want this thing with Slade to get bigger than one simple job in return for one simple favour. But, as predicted – if she’d stopped and given it some serious thought – it had spiralled into favour after favour, and still, Sophie waved the threat over her, and still, Sophie laughed at her, with her high morals and low self-esteem.

  It was a laugh. But it wasn’t in the slightest bit funny, as The Magic Carousel revolved a bit further, still spinning, even though she’d been awake and in her office for the last hour or so. There was so much happening inside her mind that Lisa shrieked when her phone rang.

  — Four —

  It was a large office, and there were phones ringing all the damned time. Over at the admin desk in particular where Melanie worked, but also there were phones and conversions happening all around her, and yet Ros managed to pick up on just one out of the cacophony.

  Jeffery was summoned into Lisa Westmoreland’s office, and the door closed. This was becoming like a ritual. It was getting to the point of obsession on Ros’s part, and she climbed from her chair, about to walk across the carpet and let herself into the office. Through the window, Jeffery obviously saw her, and he put his hand up as though stopping traffic. She stopped, and then he waved her back, telling her to get back to her desk. There was pain in his eyes.

  37

  Northern England. A graveyard and a wind howling among the stones like a ghoul in a vampire movie. And, of course, the rain, incessant, pounding; umbrellas being ripped inside out, the vicar’s garments floating up around him like some weird occult version of a Marilyn Monroe scene. He finished his chat at the graveside, bowed his head in respect for the people standing there in the rain and left them to it.

  Among the dozen or so police officers who had arrived wearing pristine dress uniforms, and who now looked like a bedraggled fancy-dress party, were Cooper and Benson, heads down, praying silently for, or just contemplating, a man doing his duty, an officer of the law trying to bring order from chaos. Much missed. Sadly defeated by an evil that roamed freely among them like the vampire movie ghoul.

  ‘So, where did it all go wrong?’

  Benson squinted through the rain at Cooper. ‘It went wrong,’ he shouted over the wind, ‘with that stupid bitch, Westmoreland.’

  Cooper nodded.

  ‘And I have to say, boss, it went wrong when you didn’t take a firmer stand against them.’

  ‘Slade Crosby?’

  Benson shrugged. ‘All of them; all the crews in Leeds. You’ve got enough to bang them up, certainly the leaders. I don’t know why–’

  ‘I was waiting,’ he said. ‘I knew there was something big coming along–’

  ‘There’s always something fucking big!’

  Cooper looked at him.

  ‘And look what happens when you wait,’ he nodded at the mounds of mud before them. ‘I need a drink,’ he said, and walked away, leaving Cooper feeling empty, betrayed and worthless. But he wasn’t alone. Standing at the far side of the new grave w
as a young woman dressed in a black leather jacket. She wore black lipstick and black eye-make-up; looked like a fucking Goth, Cooper thought. For a moment, he wondered who she was and why she was there. Then it didn’t matter anymore, and he walked away too, chasing a drink with Benson.

  It was time to bring Domino to a close.

  38

  — One —

  Lisa’s nightmare vanished like smoke in a force nine. For the first time in days, she felt invincible again, like her plans were working, like they’d been positioned in the path of success by gods favourable to her. Eddie was dead, sunk into a muddy grave up north, and so surely it wouldn’t be too long before her final problem was out of the way. Slade would deal with Sophie soon, as soon as she’d given him the news that the swab from Tony Lambert’s bedroom carpet came back as horse blood. He would have to act, then; it was her payment, her final payment to him to get on with the damned job of erasing Sophie and her malignant threat.

  The nightmare carousel would be still tonight, she hoped.

  The call she’d taken was from division, saying they had discovered two shallow graves up north not far from where they’d found Collins’s car. It seemed a little strange that division had called her, but Collins was her employee, after all. Anyway, the feeling of elation completely obliterated any reservations she’d had. The silly bastard was not going to come walking back through the office door. She could relax, breathe deeply and concentrate once more.

  Out in the office though, things were not so smooth. Lisa peered through the glass at Ros and couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her.

  — Two —

  Since Kojak and Columbo were out of the office, it fell to Jeffery to pass on the news to Ros. He stepped out of Lisa’s office and felt like running away. He saw Ros’s eyes staring him down, and he was sure she could tell just how nervous he was. He looked not at her, but past her, out of the window just so he wouldn’t have to see the pain of expectation in her eyes, and then he looked at the carpet, unable to deal with it any longer.