DEAD LIST a gripping detective thriller full of suspense Read online

  DEAD LIST

  A gripping detective thriller full of suspense

  (DI Calladine & DS Bayliss Book 3)

  Helen H. Durrant

  First published 2015

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this.

  ©Helen H. Durrant

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  http://www.joffebooks.com/contact/

  THERE IS A GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH SLANG IN THE BACK OF THIS BOOK FOR US READERS.

  THE FIRST TWO CALLADINE AND BAYLISS MYSTERIES ARE AVAILABLE NOW:

  BOOK 1 DEAD WRONG:

  http://www.amazon.co.uk/WRONG-gripping-detective-thriller-suspense-ebook/dp/B010Y7641M/

  http://www.amazon.com/WRONG-gripping-detective-thriller-suspense-ebook/dp/B010Y7641M/

  First a shooting, then a grisly discovery on the common . . .

  Police partners, D.I. Calladine and D.S. Ruth Bayliss race against time to track down a killer before the whole area erupts in violence. Their boss thinks it’s all down to drug lord Ray Fallon, but Calladine’s instincts say something far nastier is happening on the Hobfield housing estate.

  Can this duo track down the murderer before anyone else dies and before the press publicize the gruesome crimes? Detectives Calladine and Bayliss are led on a trail which gets dangerously close to home. In a thrilling finale they race against time to rescue someone very close to Calladine’s heart.

  BOOK 2: DEAD SILENT

  http://www.amazon.co.uk/SILENT-gripping-detective-thriller-suspense-ebook/dp/B01185U8NE/

  http://www.amazon.com/SILENT-gripping-detective-thriller-suspense-ebook/dp/B01185U8NE/

  A body is found in a car crash, but the victim was already dead . . .

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  THE FIRST TWO CALLADINE AND BAYLISS MYSTERIES ARE AVAILABLE NOW:

  Glossary of English Slang for US readers

  CHARACTER LIST

  Prologue

  The elderly woman thrust a sheet of paper at Tariq Ahmed through the open door. She wasn’t smiling.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” she said, and her voice quivered with emotion. “I’ve lost my cat. I’m going to all the houses in the road.” She showed him the printed photo. “He’s been gone almost a week and I think someone must have taken him in.”

  She was small, slightly red-faced with a long thin nose on which perched a pair of old fashioned spectacles. Doctor Tariq Ahmed, who wasn’t smiling either, shook his head in annoyance. It had been a long hard day. All he wanted was some well-earned peace and quiet. “Sorry — I can’t help.” He gave the image a cursory glance and dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “And don’t drop that on my drive on your way out,” he told her, attempting to shut the door.

  But the old woman let out a loud sob and grabbed hold of his arm as she teetered on her feet. “Please. I have to find him — he’s all I’ve got and he’ll pine.”

  “Use your stick. Lean on that, it’s what it’s for,” he told her sharply, trying to prise her fingers off his arm. “You should go home. It’s dark and cold. Even your cat will have better sense than to wander the streets on a night like this.”

  Something about the way she looked wasn’t quite right. Her hair was odd and her clothes were too big, but he was too irritated to work out why that might be.

  He made to close the door again but this time she flopped forward. “I feel woozy,” she gasped, breathlessly. “I know I shouldn’t be out; I’ve got a bad chest. But I have to find him. Could I have a glass of water, please, take one of my tablets? Then I’ll go.”

  Tariq Ahmed narrowed his eyes, staring at the woman. She looked old and frail; he was a doctor after all, so despite his annoyance at being disturbed he felt compelled to help. With an impatient sigh, he turned and went back down his hallway to the kitchen, leaving her at the door.

  * * *

  Harriet Finch smiled. This was easier than she’d imagined. In a few paces she was inside. Taking care to follow him quietly, she was at his back in seconds.

  She pressed a catch on her walking stick, releasing a wicked-looking blade like a bayonet. It was a nifty little gadget inherited from her grandfather and had languished unused for years in her hall cupboard. When she remembered it was there she’d given it an overhaul. Now it was a fine weapon.

  She raised the stick high. If the doctor had looked up, he would have seen her shadow etched on the wall. But he didn’t, and before he realised what was happening she had plunged the blade into the centre of his back.

  It slid in, almost like a knife into butter at first, but then it stuck. There was something hard in the way — vertebrae? Harriet let out a loud grunt of annoyance, her arm twisting and pushing against the obstruction. Finally she was rewarded with a satisfying little crunch as the blade slid the last few inches deep into his body.

  He didn’t even turn. She watched his arms flail wildly and heard him utter a feeble little groan. She almost laughed when he clutched his side and with one last wail pitched forward, headlong onto the floor.

  Harriet’s aim was true — he was done for. Another flick of her thumb and the blade retracted. Perfect. All she had to do now was the last bit, so the police would get things right. Over the coming days Harriet was going to carry out a number of murders and they would all be different. She didn’t want to be a nuisance. Of course they’d investigate, they’d have to. But she didn’t want them chasing their tails looking for multiple killers.

  She took a single, six-inch nail and a hammer from her bag and fished in her pocket for the card. Taking care not to get blood on her clothes, she pushed Doctor Ahmed onto his back. She placed the card against his closed right eye and positioned the nail. With one powerful stroke of the hammer she forced the metal deep into his skull through the eye socket, fixing the card in place. A tarot card on each of the bodies would be her signature. The police would link the killings, which would make it easier for them in the end.

  Harriet didn’t want to tarry but she couldn’t help being curious. After all, this was the man who’d started it; he was so cold and had no empathy whatsoever. Over the last few months she’d come to hate him. Since she was here she wanted to see how he lived, what made him tick.

  She wandered idly from room to room, eyeing the casual elegance of the furnishings. He had good taste and obviously enjoyed having nice things around him. Of course with his job he could afford them. His walls were covered in paintings, some she recognised as the work of local artists.

  His sitting room was dimly lit; there was only one small lamp on a table, but something glinted, catching her eye. It was a gold envelope addressed
to Doctor T. Ahmed. Harriet picked it up and looked inside. The envelope contained two invitations to an art exhibition to be held later that week at the Leesworth Community Centre. She hadn’t bought her friend Nesta’s birthday present yet, and Nesta was an art lover. The invite said there’d be food and wine. Nesta would like that too. Harriet put the envelope in her pocket and went back into the kitchen.

  There was a large pool of blood forming around the body. She smiled to herself. This was good, very good, and so much better than sitting around at home moping. And it was only fitting that he should be the first. After all, it was he who had given her the grim news. So it served him right, the heartless bastard.

  She leaned forward to check that the image on the tarot card could be clearly seen. ‘The Tower,’ otherwise known as ‘the bolt from the blue.’ How very apt. Doctor Tariq Ahmed certainly hadn’t seen it coming.

  Chapter 1

  Tuesday

  “So you can’t even give us a date?” Ruth asked, as she helped herself to another grape from the bag on the sofa, where Tom Calladine lay sprawled. “Or perhaps you don’t want to,” she suggested with a frown on her face. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were swinging the lead. So come on then, come clean — what has the doctor said? Your injuries weren’t really that bad, were they? It’s just that work is piling up and we were short-handed before you went and got . . . well, before you got yourself shot,” she said soberly.

  “You’re a hard woman, Ruth Bayliss. You’d have me out of my sick bed and back at my desk without a second thought, ready or not.”

  “Ready!” she scoffed. “OK, your arm caught a bullet, but come on, Tom, it barely winged you.”

  “Thanks to Lydia’s quick thinking,” he told her pointedly. “Without that woman’s timely intervention things might be very different now.” He sniffed.

  Ruth rolled her eyes — he was really milking it.

  “You got shot and you knocked yourself out when you hit the floor. Surely even you must have recovered by now. Think about the timescale — all that was over two months ago. So . . . I have to ask, what’s stopping you?”

  “I broke my arm too, don’t forget that.” He snatched up his grapes and stuffed the bag behind a cushion, out of her reach.

  “If I didn’t know you better, Tom Calladine, I’d say you’d become a tad work-shy,” she suggested and took a step back out of his reach.

  “Like I said — a hard woman,” he grimaced, picking up the cushion and throwing it at her. “You’ve got some cheek. I’d like to see you apprehend a villain with an arm like mine.”

  “If that’s all that’s bothering you, then I’ll do the apprehending, and you can come back and do the thinking. Seriously though, we really do need you. It’s crap at the nick right now. Jones got the push — don’t even bother asking me what happened because no one’s talking. So what do they do? They put Brad Long in charge! Brad bloody Long, for heaven’s sake. Called him ‘acting DCI’ and stuck him in Jones’s office.”

  “That bad, eh? Well, looks like you could certainly do with a bailout.”

  “Too bloody true we could. So when can we expect you?”

  She was willing him to say the right thing. Life at the coalface was no fun at the moment, and without Tom it would only get worse.

  But Tom Calladine didn’t get time to answer. Ruth went to see who it was knocking on his front door.

  * * *

  “Rocco!” he called out to the young detective constable. “Great to see you. Get yourself a coffee or something and join us.” He nodded in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Sorry, sir, it’s Ruth that I need to see,” DC Simon Rockliffe’s face was serious — this was obviously no social call.

  “We’ve got a major incident on our hands — at Hopecross,” he explained. “A consultant from City Hospital in Manchester was found dead on his kitchen floor this morning.”

  “You should have rung,” Ruth told him.

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” Calladine piped up. “Not only is it good to see you but now you can give us both the grisly details. I presume it is murder?”

  “Yep — stabbed in the back and there’s something else — something rather creepy. The poor guy had a playing card nailed to his head — can you believe that? Goodness knows what it means, but it’s already looking like a real head-scratcher.”

  “Anything else?” Calladine was sitting up now.

  “Not that I know of but we need to get down there quick,” he said, turning to face Ruth. “Long’s sent DS Thorpe to the scene but he’ll miss more than he notices.”

  “I’m getting pretty sick of having to cover his back. The man’s a menace and a real lazy sod. He’s sticking his nose in everywhere and all because it was his DI that got the leg up.” Ruth folded her arms, looking long and hard at Calladine. “It should have been you, you know. Fallon or no Fallon, you’re the best man for the job. The whole nick knows it.”

  But Calladine knew Ruth was wrong. It was all about Ray Fallon. Fallon was a criminal, awaiting trial for murder and, as far as everyone knew, the man was his cousin! If he wanted to move ahead in his career, he’d have to come clean and do something about the information he was sitting on.

  “What about this new case, then? How are you going to tackle it?” He pointedly did not reply to Ruth’s observation about Fallon.

  “Well, if you got your arse off that sofa, you could come with us. Once Thorpe sees you’ve reappeared he’ll back off, so will Long,” Ruth suggested, tapping her foot.

  “That’s no way to speak to your DI, Sergeant,” Calladine retorted.

  “Well, you’re not, are you? Not at the moment anyway.”

  “Hopecross, you said?” Calladine reached for a notepad on his coffee table and hastily scribbled a couple of lines. “Just letting Lydia know where I’ve gone. She worries,” he confided with a grin.

  “Quite the little housewife,” Ruth noted sarcastically. “Got you wrapped round her little finger good and proper. I bet it’s down to her that you’ve stayed home with your feet up all this time.”

  “What if it is? I like being wrapped round her little finger,” he smirked. “I like her being here — she’s been brilliant.”

  And she had. Despite reservations about her housekeeping skills, she’d come up with the goods where it counted. She’d been his nurse, his cook; she’d sorted out his finances and even advised his daughter about her problems when he’d been still groggy from the morphine.

  “She got you into this mess. Or have you forgotten it was she who went tearing after your renegade cousin and brought him back here, gun in hand?”

  “Fallon was after me before Lydia stuck her nose in. He knew it was me that got the evidence to finally convict him. I was always going to be his target.”

  “Any excuse for not seeing things as they are,” she sighed. “Do you want to help with this, or what?”

  “I could take a look. I suppose it can’t do any harm.”

  “My car, then — I promise to bring you home afterwards.”

  “I’ll get my coat.”

  * * *

  The massive detached stone house was set in a leafy lane bordering the village of Hopecross — very different from his own tiny cottage in the back streets of Leesdon. Calladine wondered how much it would cost to run a place like this — too much most likely. But then their victim was a big-shot doctor, so he could probably afford it.

  Amidst the heavy uniformed presence, Calladine spotted the pathologist, Doctor Sebastian Hoyle and the senior forensic scientist, Doctor Julian Batho. He hadn’t seen them in quite a while.

  “Good to have you back, Tom!” Doc Hoyle shouted to him, a big smile on his face. “If you are back that is. You had us worried for a while,” he said, handing out white, paper suits. “You never know with knocks to the head. Are you on this one? Only DS Thorpe was here earlier but I don’t think he stayed above two minutes.”

  “Yes, Doc, this one’s mine,” Ca
lladine confirmed. “And yes, I think I might be back, finally. I’ve certainly missed it,” he said, matching the pathologist’s grin.

  Doc Hoyle nodded. “He’s been dead since last night, no later. His cleaning lady found him earlier this morning. Poor woman, she’s been carted off to the General in shock.”

  Calladine pulled on the suit, donned a pair of overshoes and a mask and followed Doc Hoyle into the house.

  “According to Ruth I’ve not showed my face a minute too soon,” he told the doc. “She’s getting a bit lippy about the situation at work, and to be honest, I’ve had enough of being an invalid.”

  “As long as you’re up to it. This job’s no picnic even when things are slack.”

  “Picnic or not, I need to get back. My brain’s going to porridge. I’m in serious danger of losing my edge.”

  Tariq Ahmed was lying on the floor. The pool of blood had seeped from the small kitchen out into the hallway.

  “One stab wound to the back. The post-mortem should throw some light on what was used but it was a long blade, I’d say. The volume of blood loss suggests one of the major arteries has been severed — possibly the aorta.”

  “There are plenty of prints. We’ll start checking them out as soon as, but I’ll lay odds they belong to him.” Julian nodded at the body. “My bet is that our man wore gloves,” he added. “We’ll bag everything and take what we find back to the lab.”

  “Did you give DS Thorpe the details?”

  “He didn’t stay long enough.” Julian smirked. “He had a quick look round and decided he’d be better off going back to the nick.”

  So Ruth had been right.

  “Any sign of the murder weapon?”

  “Don’t think we’re going to be that lucky, Inspector,” Julian told him.

  “What do we know about Doctor Ahmed?” Calladine asked Rocco.