Blood Runs Cold_A completely unputdownable mystery and suspense thriller Read online

  After a while, Blair got up and picked up the lantern. The room wasn’t big but the shadows in the corners were dark and deep. She ran her hands over the walls. They were smooth, but the floor felt rough and stony. At the end of the room she saw a big, round, flat stone. It looked heavy. She tried to shift it and it moved, just an inch, but it did move. The light from the lantern wouldn’t shine into the gap, but it was dark in there and it felt deep, she could tell that much.

  She went back to her duvet and waited, wondering if Kirsty was OK. Hoping that she was. Wondering if the dog man was coming back. She felt the tears coming again but she forced herself not to cry.

  Five

  If they weren’t out interviewing or otherwise engaged, Superintendent Mark Rainsford, commanding officer of the MCRTF, liked to ‘have a chat’ with Anna on Friday afternoons. He probably would have preferred the word debrief, but he was doing his best to shrug off his military background. Chat definitely had a warmer feel to it.

  Tall, slim, white-shirted always, straight back on pain of death, Rainsford had, at least, also taken off his jacket on what had turned into a stifling afternoon. First time ever she’d seen him jacketless. Anna looked forward to the evening news headlines. It wasn’t every day that hell froze over.

  ‘What?’ Rainsford asked, seeing her smile.

  ‘Nothing, sir. Just wondering why, in this country of four seasons in every day, we’re not geared up for the extremes, that’s all. A heatwave has us sweltering, a bit of snow closes all the airports.’

  ‘The foibles of a maritime climate, Anna. But we wouldn’t have it any other way, now would we?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘How do things stand?’

  ‘Justin and Ryia are moving forward on the Bright rape case, sir. We’re going to attempt to obtain some DNA for elimination testing. We want to make sure we approach the right suspect. Dave has just briefed us on the Dawson case.’

  ‘How’s he shaping up?’

  ‘He’s keen, I’ll give him that. Unorthodox, certainly.’

  ‘You two should get on well then.’

  Anna gave him her best inscrutable look.

  Rainsford sighed. ‘He’s still on a probationary period here. He’ll want to try and impress.’

  ‘I don’t want to be impressed, sir. But I’m happy to be fair. See what his approach leads to. And the Dawson case will be a good test. As far as I can see, evidence was, and is, thin on the ground.’

  ‘What direction does he want to take it?’

  ‘Revisit the scene, review forensics and reinterview a suspect. See what we can glean from this new image.’

  ‘He did some very good work in the Midlands.’

  ‘Serious crimes, wasn’t it, sir?’

  Rainsford nodded. ‘Exposed a nasty drug-trafficking ring. But it doesn’t mean he’s cut out for what we do here, I appreciate that. Plus, he’s ambitious. He’s the type of bloke who’ll be watching you, too. Seeing how you got up the ladder.’

  ‘So long as it doesn’t get in the way of how we work, he can watch what he likes. I’ll keep you up to speed, sir.’ She got up to leave but Rainsford’s pained expression stopped her.

  ‘I’ve been avoiding this, Anna, but I can’t any longer. Hector Shaw wants to see you. Or rather he wants you to be available for another… expedition. He said the weather was now warm enough.’

  She kept eye contact with Rainsford, though the desire to squeeze her own eyes shut and grind her teeth almost overwhelmed her. He read the stare with sympathy.

  ‘You’re under no obligation. No one would blame you. I want to make that absolutely clear.’

  She nodded. Rainsford did earnest employer exceptionally well. What a military training at Sandhurst did for you, she supposed.

  Stop it.

  She wasn’t being fair. Not to Rainsford, nor the regional commander nor the chief constable. Every one of them said exactly what Rainsford had just repeated when they found out what Shaw had done. Meddled with an investigation and manipulated Anna in a dangerous and Machiavellian way. Anna still found it difficult to believe that a man in a maximum-security prison serving an indeterminate sentence for multiple murders could exert any influence on events outside. But this wasn’t any man; this was Hector Shaw.

  Interviewed by Anna seven months ago as part of a cold case investigation when his DNA lit up the board thanks to advanced analysis techniques, Shaw became the prime suspect in the rape and abduction of a girl called Tanya Cromer. It had been Anna’s job to try to get his confession. If she could get Shaw to admit his involvement, Anna’d hoped she’d be able to give Tanya’s family the closure they needed, to confirm her murder and put her body to rest. But Shaw’d had other ideas.

  He hadn’t confessed, but he’d led Anna and her team to Tanya’s body, and to those of another man. The man Shaw claimed was her true attacker. The DNA evidence from the scene that flagged Shaw’s presence also confirmed that a second man was there. A man called Petran, whom Shaw admitted to burying alive.

  Had Shaw killed him? And had he killed Tanya? Shaw had also promised Anna more ‘buried treasure’ – his euphemistic term for interred bodies. And it was this veiled promise that Rainsford alluded to now. Yet, sitting in front of a man who could have committed these crimes wasn’t the only, nor the worst, aspect of her involvement with Shaw. What she could not have anticipated was for Shaw to develop a liking for her. Something she had not encouraged in the slightest.

  Anna had been working on Charles Willis’s case at the same time as reinterviewing Shaw. Believing in Anna’s ability to find Willis, Shaw had somehow used his connections both inside and outside prison to bring Willis out of hiding and into a direct confrontation with her. He’d even managed to expose her address to the world, and to Willis in particular. It had been, in Shaw’s words, ‘a test’. One that she’d passed, but which had put her in mortal danger in the process.

  Though it was a sunny Friday afternoon, the shadows under Rainsford’s desk cast by the slanting sun felt suddenly and unaccountably chilly on Anna’s legs.

  ‘I haven’t drawn a line under the Tanya Cromer case yet, sir, we both know that. What he wants to see me about now may be related to that. It may be something else. All I know is that he insisted on it being summer. When it was warm,’ Anna said.

  I want to be able to smell your perfume, or your nervous musky sweat.

  ‘I know he’s been sending you emails. I’ve shown some to cybercrime, by the way. They’re looking into it.’ Rainsford looked suddenly like he’d bitten into something disgusting. ‘Shaw’s poison, we all know that. Pure rat bait.’

  ‘But just like rat bait he’s useful, too.’

  Rainsford waited.

  Anna sighed, her mind made up. ‘Shaw and I have unfinished business. I’ve been putting it off because… because I felt I needed to be stronger. But I’m ready now.’

  Really?

  Rainsford nodded. ‘I hate myself for even talking about—’

  Anna interrupted him. ‘He knows things, sir. I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t…’ she searched for the right word and settled on, ‘re-engage. Petran’s death needs investigating. Shaw refuses to talk to the team who’ve been looking into it. He may well be wanting to talk to me about that.’

  A tight little smile softened Rainsford’s expression. ‘Petran is, or rather was, on the watch list in at least three force areas for sexual harassment, theft and petty crime.’

  Anna nodded. ‘That all ties in with Shaw’s story, sir.’

  Rainsford looked at her appraisingly. She found it mildly disconcerting. ‘Shipwright was right about you, Anna.’

  It broke the tension. Mention of Ted Shipwright, ex-DCI on her cold case team and her mentor, had that effect.

  ‘Have you spoken to him recently, sir? Last I heard he was taking up painting.’

  Rainsford shook his head. ‘The ACC wants us to write to retired DCIs, see if any of them want to come back part-time to solve this blo
ody recruitment crisis. There is no substitute for experience, Anna.’

  Her heart quickened. Having Shipwright back would be—

  Rainsford dashed her hopes with a held-up hand. ‘Of course, I wouldn’t dream of it. I value my intestines, and Mrs Shipwright assures me she’d have mine as a pair of garters if I so much as suggested it.’

  A balloon deflated in Anna’s chest. Her old boss had come through a heart attack alive and well. She had no right to expect anything of him, other than the odd word of advice. He’d done his time and taught her well. She mentally rewound the tape and replayed the snippet that brought Shipwright into the conversation in the first place.

  ‘How is he right, sir? DCI Shipwright, I mean.’

  ‘Fishing, Anna?’

  ‘I never fish, sir, but a little validation is always welcome.’

  Rainsford held her gaze, laser-like. ‘Ted said that I should trust your judgement when it comes to Shaw. And, in his opinion, everything else.’

  Anna nodded, the subtext, like a wayward ventriloquist’s dummy, screaming to be heard from its locked box. Giving Anna Gwynne her head had already almost got her killed. But it also led to the closure of one of the biggest cases in Avon and Somerset’s history.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘And you? Are you OK, Anna?’

  ‘Shipshape, sir.’

  ‘OK. Well, I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. It’s good to have you back. I’m here if you need me.’ Rainsford smiled. It lasted three seconds before he put on his serious, down-to-business face again. ‘Shall I set up Shaw for Monday afternoon?’

  Six

  Saturday

  Some weekends, Anna made the journey back to her sister Kate’s house for a Sunday lunch with her mother, her brother-in-law Rob and their two kids. Sometimes they’d go large and have Rob’s parents over, too. But today Kate was coming over to Bristol for the afternoon and evening and Anna had all sorts of plans to clean up the flat. Essentials needed doing: laundry, show the hoover around the floor, catch up on paperwork and chill.

  That idea lasted until mid-morning when she finally gave in to that part of her brain that would not stop thinking about Rosie Dawson. She fetched the file from her briefcase and, dressed in a pair of shorts, a strappy vest and flip-flops, took her coffee outside. Trisha had made summaries and photocopies of crime scene photos that had no right being looked at on a furnace-hot day with the sky untroubled by a whisper of cloud above. She read the reports but, as always with cold cases, had no feel for it yet. One of the difficulties she always encountered was getting a handle on the geography. She’d only ever been to Clevedon, the town where Rosie was abducted, to walk on the pier. Didn’t know what sort of place it was. It soon became too hot to sit out, and after twenty minutes Anna could feel her skin tingling. It matched the frustration she felt for the need to get on with things.

  Though the plan was for them to visit the abduction site after speaking to the doctor that Woakes had the hots for on Monday, Anna gave in to her need to act. It had dawned on her early on in her career that at some point in any investigation she would need to be alone at the scene. Take in what the photographs didn’t show. Smells, noises, things that the perpetrator and the victim would have been aware of. She changed into jeans, kept the strappy top on, and a little before midday, eased herself into the greenhouse her car had become and hoped that it wouldn’t take too long for the air con to kick in as she headed, ironically, back towards her place of work.

  Clevedon sat almost halfway between Bristol and Weston-Super-Mare on the estuary. Victorian in design, with its renowned pier, Clevedon looked across the Bristol Channel at industrial Wales. This was a leafy haven where kids could go to a seaweed-striped beach to kayak and crab, while Dad did the half-hour commute into Bristol. It was not a place where people got murdered or kids stolen. Everyone knew that. Yet the estate agents couldn’t emblazon those facts all over their brochures in big bold letters because they’d be had up by advertising standards. Bad things could happen anywhere, even in Clevedon. And what had made it so much worse was how it had taken place under Avon and Somerset’s very noses. Clevedon was only six miles from police HQ in Portishead. You could walk it. Indeed, the point of abduction had been no more than two hundred yards from the old Clevedon nick on Sunnyside Road as the final, crowning insult. People had taken it very hard.

  She parked in the new station at Castlewood and walked towards the path where Rosie had been taken, stood on a mini roundabout and stared at the trees in the wood. Fir wood. Odd name; most of the trees looked deciduous to her. No one had seen anyone in combat fatigues enter the area in 2008. She looked at her map. Up to her right was the B3124 and stretching to the east, Court Wood, a much bigger area, full of leafy paths and narrow trails. Plenty of room for someone to wait and cross over at the narrowest point. At All Saints Lane, perhaps?

  She took the path behind the houses on Highdale Avenue, noting the marked section; a bend just behind St Nicholas’s school. When she arrived there, she looked around. The perpetrator had chosen well. A quiet spot. Not overlooked by the nearby gardens, at a point where the bend in the path hid walkers from other users in both directions. This was a very devious and very planned attack by someone who’d scoped the area and bided his time. He was organised. May even have waited for the ideal moment over the course of more than one day. What did that tell her about him? That he was local? Unemployed? That he wouldn’t have been missed from work on a sunny afternoon at around 4 p.m.?

  From the abduction point she walked the path again, leaving at the Hill Road end. It took her ten minutes to reach the point where they believed he’d parked his car. She walked back, fetched her own car and drove back to the same place on Hill Road. From there, it was a five-minute drive around the town over a couple of roundabouts to the M5 junction, and a major motorway that stretched from Birmingham to Exeter. A corridor running north–south through countryside and cities where someone could hide a small girl in any one of thousands of locations.

  But Anna needed to find just one.

  In all the time she’d been in Clevedon, she’d passed only a half-dozen people. Sleepy wasn’t the word for it. And on a weekday, the only people around at the time Rosie was taken would have been parents and children. Whoever had done this would know that and planned it very carefully. This was not an opportunistic crime. The abductor knew his entry and leaving points and had a quick and clean exit strategy. Anna felt the tingle that had driven her out of the flat that morning kick up a notch.

  She looked through her windscreen at the quiet road, knowing that something heinous had taken place here nine years ago. People who took children did so to feed a need. An urge. And that urge was rarely assuaged by doing so only once. Reoffending rates amongst child sex offenders was high with almost 20% doing so within a year. It wasn’t unreasonable to assume that whoever had done this to Rosie may well have done it to someone else. That thought alone was more than enough incentive to fuel her conviction that this murderer needed to be caught.

  Anna gunned the engine, pleased with her morning’s work and feeling, for the first time in weeks, the satisfaction of knowing she was back in the hunt.

  Seven

  Khosa was sipping a lime and soda, Holder half a shandy. The sandwiches were home-made, but they’d skimped on the pickle in the ploughman’s. Khosa looked around at the decor, unimpressed. Framed photographs of team captains stared down from the walls. Above Holder’s head, a glass case containing a club presented by someone called Jacklin took pride of place. There were wheel-back chairs and round wooden tables. In a bar next door, lots of men in brightly coloured sweaters sat talking loudly and laughing in leather club chairs. The waitress who’d brought their food was a pasty-faced seventeen-year-old string of beans with acne. Behind the bar, a ruddy-faced husband-and-wife team ran the ship.

  ‘So, this is golf, then.’ Khosa said.

  ‘Don’t know,’ Holder replied. ‘I’ve only ever been in one ot
her club. That was with my dad at a municipal course down in Devon. This is a private club. In fact, I’m surprised they let you in.’

  Khosa’s eyes flashed.

  Holder laughed. ‘Women and golf clubs. Didn’t I read somewhere that some club or other in Scotland has only just voted to let women in?’

  ‘Oh good. Pass me the application form.’ Khosa made big eyes at the ceiling.

  It was one thirty-five in the afternoon and they’d been sitting in the lounge bar of Camber Hill Golf Club for thirty minutes. They’d chosen a table near to the players’ bar so they could watch Dominick Morton walk in from the eighteenth hole and were now waiting for him to appear. They might even have to buy another drink each. Holder was contemplating suggesting it when Khosa said, ‘Your three o’clock,’ and dropped her gaze.

  Morton walked into the bar with three other men. All portly, all dressed in chinos and polo shirts, tanned from hours spent outside searching for balls in the rough. Morton ordered a round of beers and took the tray over to sit with his fellow foursome to dissect the round.

  Khosa and Holder couldn’t hear what was being said, but the occasional peel of raucous laughter spelled banter. Ten minutes after he’d walked into the bar, Morton got up and walked through the lounge towards a bifold door leading out to a patio with wicker chairs under umbrellas. Holder followed, reaching into his pocket for his prop e-cigarette.

  Morton climbed down some steps to talk to a fellow smoker while Holder stayed on the patio, watching. To the left, a cylindrical metal refuse bin stood against the wall, its lid open to the elements and filled with sand. A dozen stubbed-out cigarette butts were already buried end on. Holder stood, watching a young kid practise putting, merrily vaping up his apple-flavoured concoction, pretending to contemplate the golfing world at his feet and taking very little notice of the players who sauntered up to the putting green. Seeing, but not registering, the man in the lime-green golf sweater, Nike hat and sunglasses with his back towards him who seemed preoccupied with his set-up over the ball in readiness for a putt.