Blood Runs Cold_A completely unputdownable mystery and suspense thriller Read online

  But Anna had.

  A tingle, a static burst, flickered in her head. This was what was bothering her. Something small that goes unnoticed. Not Rosie stolen from her grandmother’s arms, not even the prospect of Blair’s bones in a plastic bag. What bothered her was something exactly like this.

  She felt the cockroach’s leg quiver and jump as the tingling charge rippled over her skin, electrifying her thoughts, solidifying them into a concrete idea that finally slotted home.

  What a fool she’d been. They’d all been. Shaw’s voice was instantly in her head.

  ‘Abbie had a hearing aid, like Blair. She was always breaking the bastard thing, too.’

  Shaw, seeing beyond the terror of Blair’s expression to the truth that they’d all ignored.

  She picked up her work phone and speed-dialled Khosa.

  ‘Ma’am?’

  ‘Ryia, I need you to contact the FLO in the Blair Smeaton case. In the image we have of her, the first one of her in the hole, she’s wearing a hearing aid.’

  ‘OK…’ Khosa sounded confused.

  ‘In the image, it’s been repaired. Ask the FLO if it was broken before she was taken.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Do it now, Ryia, and ring me back right away.’

  Khosa rang off.

  Hawley was looking at her, waiting for her to say something. ‘You know something, don’t you?’

  But she didn’t answer him. Not yet. She drove, her mind spinning, willing the phone to ring. After four long minutes, it finally did.

  ‘Ryia?’

  ‘Ma’am, Blair’s mother has seen the photograph. The FLO said it nearly broke her. But she did comment on the hearing aid. It hadn’t looked like that before, with the black tape. She said it must have broken and been repaired. Blair, or someone, must have fixed it.’

  Fixed it.

  The tingle she’d felt moments before became an electric charge. The cockroach’s leg began jerking madly.

  ‘Ma’am?’ Khosa’s voice on the phone again, breaking the silence, but triggering a memory in Anna of other things the DC had said in the pub the previous evening. What was it?

  ‘But if it was all planned, how could he possibly know this information about the victims unless he knew the families?’

  Anna breathed out slowly, trying to remember something else, something Hawley had said. She turned to him.

  ‘When you showed me the cuttings the first time, you said something. Why the original investigators kept coming back to you.’

  Hawley frowned and shook his head.

  ‘Think, Ben. It’s important.’

  ‘Erm… they asked me how many other little girls I’d invited onto my lap in the clinic.’

  ‘No,’ Anna said. ‘Not that, something else.’

  Hawley shrugged. ‘You mean me knowing all about Rosie from the notes? They kept on about it. Like Woakes did.’

  The cockroach’s leg spasmed.

  ‘Ma’am?’ Khosa’s voice again, small from the speaker. ‘Is there something we should know?’

  ‘Stay ready, Ryia. You and Justin. Do not put down your phone.’ Anna killed the call and accelerated to a roundabout with a Travelodge and a KFC. Hawley braced against the dash as she took the curve, doubling back at full speed.

  ‘Have I missed something?’ he said as she emerged back onto the dual carriageway, back towards Cheltenham and the hospital at speed.

  ‘Not only you. We all have. Every single one of us.’

  Thirty-Seven

  Starkey stood in the yard at Pux cottage glancing at the adjacent barn. He walked towards it. Through the gap between the padlocked steel doors of the barn he could see two vehicles. One a large horse transporter, one a van covered in tarpaulin. The cover had slipped a bit, revealing a white Vauxhall Combo. Before turning away he put on a policeman’s hat. His old hat from his time on the force. He’d kept it because you never knew when it might come in handy. He walked across to the cottage and unlocked the front door, walked quietly into the house and closed the door behind him.

  As soon as he pulled back the bolt securing the basement door the smell hit him. Something scurried away below.

  ‘Blair? Are you there. Are you alright, Blair?’

  No answer.

  The smell was coming from the bucket. Starkey took it out, poured it into the toilet and flushed it. Went back to the basement.

  ‘Time we left here now, Blair. Time to go,’ he said softly.

  ‘No,’ she said from the well hole.

  Starkey walked across and looked down at her. She was clean. Had looked after herself. ‘You need to come out from there, Blair.’

  ‘No. What do you want?’

  ‘I’ve come to get you. To take you home.’

  Blair shook her head.

  ‘Back to your mum and your sister.’

  Tears sprang to Blair’s eyes and her face crumpled. ‘You’re lying. You’re not a bobby. You’re not taking me home.’

  ‘Of course, I am.’

  Blair shook her head. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Don’t you want to go home?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then it’s OK, it’s safe. But you need to come out.’

  ‘Bring Kirsty. Then I’ll know you’re telling the truth.’

  ‘I can’t do that, Blair.’

  ‘Then I’m not coming out!’

  Thirty-Eight

  Anna pulled in to the hospital car park and got out. Hawley followed. She barely noticed.

  She hurried back through the entrance, flashed her warrant card at reception and this time was let in without needing the administrator. Coleen Bridges was pushing a cart laden with a dozen or more sealed and packaged items. Anna stopped her.

  ‘I thought you’d gone.’

  ‘I had a fresh thought. I see you’re busy, but this is urgent. Five minutes, I promise.’

  ‘Right,’ Coleen said.

  ‘I want to go back to the room where Rosie was seen.’

  Coleen obliged and they stood once more in the room with the couch.

  ‘But you told me this is not where you would have normally seen her?’

  Hawley replied from behind her. ‘No, the room next door has, or had, black-out blinds for eye exams. For looking at the back of the eye. But we didn’t need that here with Rosie.’

  ‘Because you were examining the front of her eye and the equipment was mobile?’

  ‘That’s correct, the slit lamp is on a wheeled adjustable table.’

  ‘But normally you wouldn’t move it?’

  Coleen shook her head. ‘The ophthalmologists go spare. They say rattling it around can dislodge mirrors and lenses.’

  ‘And that day you had to move it because of maintenance?’

  ‘Yes.’ Coleen pointed to the wall unit. ‘We have people in to service all the bits of equipment we have. That day it was the Rowsys guy. I know because when I went in to put the light on for Rosie to be seen, he had the wall unit in bits on the desk. Has to be done, of course.’

  Anna felt the tingle surge.

  ‘He?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘You said, “He had the wall unit in bits.”’

  ‘Yes. He’s been coming for years and he’s as good as gold. Never a bother. Gets on with it and he’s quick. But in a unit like this there’s never a good time. So, we have to work around him otherwise he’d never finish,’ Coleen said brightly, but then her expression became puzzled as she saw the look Anna gave her.

  ‘Do you have a name?’

  ‘Rowsys. That’s the com—’

  ‘The man. The one that’s as good as gold.’

  ‘Ooh, uh, he was here a few months ago. Big chap. Could do with losing a few pounds. We even offered to take his blood pressure last time. I’m sure we have his card somewhere.’

  Anna nodded, her brain fizzing. She forced herself to be calm. ‘Can you find it?’

  ‘Sure.’ Coleen smiled and walked away.

 
Anna didn’t look at Hawley but she sensed his eyes upon her. Coleen came back with a card. Anna took it, placed it on a desk. She read the name and felt the world tilt once again.

  Rowsys-uk

  Specialists in on-site calibration and repairs.

  Systems engineer: Kevin Starkey

  Thirty-Nine

  In the basement of Pux Cottage, Starkey turned away from Blair Smeaton and came back with a bucket. She looked up at him, her eyes huge with fear. She sucked in a great gasp of air, her body quivering, terror turning her eyes into globes of pure fear. Starkey looked down at what was in the bottom and said, ‘Eels like well holes, too.’

  Blair wailed.

  Starkey upended the bucket into the hole. Blair screamed and leaped upwards reflexively as the eels writhed and flexed at her feet, all thoughts of hiding now gone. Starkey grabbed her by the shoulders and had her out in three seconds. Put tape over her mouth and her hands tied within a minute. Her struggles were futile. Five minutes later, he was driving back out onto the main road, music turned up loud in the car so that he didn’t have to listen to her moving about in the boot. She’d exhaust herself soon and settle down.

  He had a CD in the player. Hits of the 1980s. Frankie Goes to Hollywood kicked in. ‘Relax’. Starkey smiled. Yeah that’s what he should do: relax. But he couldn’t. A crackling inferno of anticipation was raging inside him as he pointed the car north on the motorway. He’d only truly begin to relax when he was over the bridge. He’d keep the music on loud as he paid the toll just in case Blair decided to make some extra noise. Something gnawed at him. A hunger.

  Only this hunger, he knew, could not be assuaged by food.

  This was a different type of hunger altogether.

  His palms were sweating. He half-turned, checking the contents of the back seat. The big, camouflaged backpack was there and he knew he’d put the ropes inside it.

  Everything he needed.

  Good. Everything was good.

  He’d never told anyone about the crime perpetrated upon him by the Turners.

  He preferred, instead, to scream it into the faces of his terrified victims as they trembled before him.

  Madness’ ‘Baggy Trousers’ began. Starkey knew all the words. He started to sing.

  Forty

  Anna’s hands were shaking as she took out her phone.

  Kevin Starkey. The witness she’d spoken to a few days ago. The special constable who’d seen the red van. Whose useful statement had given them a direction of travel. A direction of travel that deliberately sent the whole investigation the wrong way.

  Kevin Starkey. An engineer. A fixer.

  Forcing her hand to be as steady as possible, she photographed the card back and front. When she looked back up she was all smiles. ‘Right, thanks Coleen, we’ll let you get back to work.’

  ‘Don’t be a stranger,’ she said to Hawley.

  He nodded and smiled.

  But Anna was already striding out of reception, phone to her ear, and Hawley had to hurry to catch up.

  ‘Do you think—’

  She held up her hand to silence him.

  ‘Trisha, I’m sending through a business card for a Kevin Starkey who works for a company called Rowsys… Yes, I know. The same Starkey… Drop everything else and find out from them what he does and where he works. Tell Justin and Ryia I want as much information as I can get about Starkey. I’m on the way back but this is a priority. I want all this yesterday.’

  Once again, they got into the car and Anna drove off. She spoke as she drove, not looking directly at Hawley.

  ‘The answer to your question is that this man is known to us. He came forward as a witness. He told us he’d seen a red van at a junction leading to the motorway in Clevedon the afternoon Rosie went missing. Other witnesses said they thought the van had white rear doors.’

  Anna’s jaw clenched, not wanting to think about the wasted man hours his simple statement and colour change had caused.

  Edinburgh’s number was in her phone book and she called it up now.

  Danaher answered after six long rings.

  ‘Julie, it’s DI Gwynne, Avon and Somerset.’

  ‘Hello ma’am. Please tell me you’ve got some more news for us?’

  ‘You are going to be getting calls from my team over the next half hour. We have a suspect in the frame. A Kevin Starkey. He visits hospitals, repairs equipment. Can you find out which hospitals Blair has been seen at over the last year or so?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘My lot are already on the case. They’ll liaise. Stay near your phone.’

  Hawley was looking at her, blinking, assimilating.

  She put him out of his misery. ‘We believed him because he was a special constable, one of us. He was part of the crew that searched for Rosie when she was first abducted. He gave up because of his other job. A job servicing instruments and small bits of equipment that might take him to various parts of the country. Blair’s hearing aid might have been damaged in the abduction. Someone had to have repaired it. Someone who knew what he was doing. Someone who could watch unobserved, pick a victim, wait for an opportunity to pick up hospital notes that contained all sorts of information.’

  How many more hospitals did Starkey visit? Every single one on Hawley’s victim list, she’d be willing to bet. And others? How many others where he watched and planned in plain sight?

  Hawley sat back as if he’d collapsed, his face bearing a pained expression. Anna could only guess what he must be thinking. Horror? Relief possibly. Woakes, she knew, would undoubtedly have now tried to winkle out some sort of link between Hawley and Starkey but she knew there would be none. Starkey saw Rosie in Cheltenham’s A and E, had accessed her notes while the department ignored him, found out she lived in Clevedon. Lived near him. That might well have been the trigger. He’d started close to home, where he knew the lay of the land, the roads, the nooks and crannies. But then he’d found a way of going wide.

  ‘You want to catch the Pogo wannabe? Work out how he chooses which flowers to pick.’

  The calls started coming in before they reached the motorway.

  Forty-One

  Starkey took the old crossing over the river on the M48. It always pissed him off to pay for the privilege of heading west. There was talk of scrapping the tolls soon. Too late for him. He’d probably paid for at least one of the steel suspension cables by now.

  He clutched the steering wheel and let his mind wander along paths no normal people would ever stray down. Anticipation flickered along his spine. You could already use cryptocurrency to pay for flights. After this, he’d take a holiday. He’d already been a couple of times. Knew exactly where he wanted to go, even though the flights were expensive.

  Thailand was too hot. Indonesia was by far the best place for now. For what he wanted. Easier pickings on the beaches there. Start in Bali and move on. He had safe addresses, knew from the forums the best spots. Half the population still earned less than $4 a day. What you would get for $10 was simply mind-blowing in the poverty-stricken towns and villages.

  Starkey’s whole body trembled at the thought of it. But first there was Blair.

  He paid the toll, music on loud, nodding at the toll booth operator who took the exact money and opened the barrier. It didn’t feel like a different country, not yet. But it was. The river stretched beneath him like a sleeping snake, its surface reflecting the sun in a rippling dazzle before he exited. He came off the M48 and headed north on the A466 towards St Arvans and the Devauden Road running through the Chepstow Park Wood. He pulled in to a spot about halfway along, avoiding the more obvious parking spaces, and got out.

  A few miles to the north and east was Tintern with its twelfth-century abbey drawing tourists in like a honeypot. To the east of the abbey on a hill stood the ruined Church of St Mary the Virgin. He’d found several interesting gravestones hidden in the overgrown vegetation there. But more enlightening was the conversation he’d had with a man whose interest
s, though similar to his, were more inclined towards architecture than the dead. On holiday from Yorkshire, the man, who never introduced himself, bored Starkey with the history of the church and the others nearby. But in amongst the tedious monologue was a snippet that had lodged firmly in Starkey’s consciousness.

  ‘I’ve only today left and it’s going to rain this afternoon. I’ll not get over to Devauden and St Wystone’s. Now that’s one I’d like to see. Not easy to find, mind you, what’s left of it. I expect you’d find some interesting stones there as well.’

  Starkey’d gone the following week. And it had been very difficult to find. A tiny chapel, hidden at the bottom of a valley next to a stream, abandoned and isolated, its graveyard virtually unrecognisable with the stones covered in ivy and hidden by coarse tussocks of grass. He’d spent the afternoon there, uncovering stones, reading dates as far back as the 1700s. But it was when he explored the tiny old building that late winter’s day that his world slipped and slid, and everything changed.

  Now, at the height of summer, the foliage off the main path was exultant. He had to lean forwards to cope with the weight of the heavy backpack. Occasionally, what was contained within shifted and wriggled. Then he’d wait until it settled and move on. Tall nettles lined the way. The average walker strolling through the thick and matted patches of head-high cow parsley would have no idea what lay beyond. Starkey was careful not to cut a swathe through the vegetation, parting it carefully instead as he pushed his way along, first climbing to a ridge and then descending along a narrow path under the huge trees that had been here for centuries. No road led to the chapel. Whatever might have been here before had long been reclaimed by the forest. An old wooden walkway, rotted and unsafe, indicated the path. But the wet and clay-filled bank had eroded the way, with bramble and fern and blackthorn providing a barrier. Starkey walked through it, feeling the tendrils catch and pull at his clothes, as if they were trying to hold him back from his task. His destiny.