Evil Impulse E-Book

Leigh Russell

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 436

Beschreibung

Detective Inspector Geraldine Steel's life takes a treacherous turn as a psychopathic serial killer unleashes a wave of terror, targeting innocent women on the streets of York. Amidst the chaos, Geraldine's own existence is thrust into jeopardy when she falls victim to abduction at the hands of a ruthless drugs syndicate. But this time, they aren't just after her—they're also threatening the safety of her beloved sister. With everything at stake, Geraldine finds herself fighting for her life, battling against evil forces determined to crush her. As the body count rises and the clock ticks, she must summon every ounce of strength and cunning to navigate this deadly game. Will she emerge victorious, or will the darkness consume her? Evil Impulse is a gripping and harrowing tale that explores the limits of courage and resilience. Leigh Russell weaves a masterful narrative of suspense and tension that will leave you breathless. Fans of Angela Marsons, Mel Sherratt, and Karin Slaughter will be captivated by this thrilling instalment in the Geraldine Steel series. Prepare for a non-stop adrenaline rush that will keep you guessing until the final page. All the Geraldine Steel books can be enjoyed as stand-alone novels.

Leseprobe

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR LEIGH RUSSELL

‘A million readers can’t be wrong! Loyal fans of Geraldine Steel will be thrilled with this latest compelling story from Leigh Russell. New readers will discover a terrific crime series to get their teeth into. Clear some time in your day, sit back and enjoy a bloody good read’ – Howard Linskey

‘Taut and compelling’ – Peter James

‘Leigh Russell is one to watch’ – Lee Child

‘Leigh Russell has become one of the most impressively dependable purveyors of the English police procedural’ – Marcel Berlins, Times

‘A brilliant talent in the thriller field’ – Jeffery Deaver

‘Death Rope is another cracking addition to the series which has just left me wanting to read more’ – Jen Med’s Book Reviews

‘The story keeps you guessing until the end. I would highly recommend this series’ – A Crime Reader’s Blog

‘A great plot that keeps you guessing right until the very end, some subtle subplots, brilliant characters both old and new and as ever a completely gripping read’ – Life of Crime

‘Russell at her very best and Steel crying out to be turned into a TV series’ – The Mole, Our Book Reviews Online

‘This is an absorbing and compelling serial killer read that explores the mind and motive of a killer, and how the police work to track down that killer’ – Jo Worgan, Brew & Books Review

‘An absolute delight’ – The Literary Shed

‘I simply couldn’t put it down’ – Shell Baker, Chelle’s Book Reviews

‘Highly engaging’ – Jacob Collins, Hooked From Page One

‘If you love a good action-packed crime novel, full of complex characters and unexpected twists this is one for you’ – Rachel Emms, Chillers, Killers and Thrillers

‘I chased the pages in love with the narrative and style… You have all you need within Class Murder for the perfect crime story’ – Francesca Wright, Cesca Lizzie Reads

‘All the things a mystery should be, intriguing, enthralling, tense and utterly absorbing’ – Best Crime Books

‘A series that can rival other major crime writers out there…’ – Best Books to Read

‘Sharp, intelligent and well plotted’ – Crime Fiction Lover

‘Another corker of a book from Leigh Russell… Russell’s talent for writing top-quality crime fiction just keeps on growing…’ – Euro Crime

‘A definite must read for crime thriller fans everywhere’ – Newbooks Magazine

‘For lovers of crime fiction this is a brilliant, not-to-be missed, novel’ – Fiction Is Stranger Than Fact

‘An innovative and refreshing take on the psychological thriller’ – Books Plus Food

‘Russell’s strength as a writer is her ability to portray believable characters’ – Crime Squad

‘A well-written, well-plotted crime novel with fantastic pace and lots of intrigue’ – Bookersatz

‘An encounter that will take readers into the darkest recesses of the human psyche’ – Crime Time

‘Well written and chock full of surprises, this hard-hitting, edge-of-the-seat instalment is yet another treat… Geraldine Steel looks set to become a household name. Highly recommended’ – Euro Crime

‘Good, old-fashioned, heart-hammering police thriller… a no-frills delivery of pure excitement’ –SAGA Magazine

‘Cut Short is not a comfortable read, but it is a compelling and important one. Highly recommended’ – Mystery Women

‘A gritty and totally addictive novel’ – New York Journal of Books

To Michael, Jo, Phillipa, Phil, Rian, and Kezia

With my love

Glossary of acronyms

DCI – Detective Chief Inspector (senior officer on case)

DI – Detective Inspector

DS – Detective Sergeant

SOCO – scene of crime officer (collects forensic evidence at scene)

PM – Post Mortem or Autopsy (examination of dead body to establish cause of death)

CCTV – Closed Circuit Television (security cameras)

VIIDO – Visual Images, Identification and Detections Office

MIT – Murder Investigation Team

Prologue

Their expressions differed each time, some pleading, others defiant, but the terror was always present. More exciting than their writhing bodies, their naked fear was addictive. No other thrill could ever be as satisfying as gazing into victims’ eyes when the realisation hit them that they were going to die, no revenge as fitting as the power to end a life in righteous execution. The death penalty was delivered in secret, but that was fine too. The knowledge that justice had been served was its own reward. Other people might not understand, but there was a higher power whose approval was assured.

Death had not been the original intention, but it was difficult to ensure their silence without it. Removing the first victim’s tongue had seemed like a clever idea which had proved horribly messy. In the end, it had been impossible to spare the woman’s life. In no time at all she had choked to death, but not before she had lost a lot of blood. The memory was still sickening, even after such a long time.

Moving the corpse would have been pointless once she was dead because it was obvious she had been killed on her own blood-soaked bed. So she had remained there, a bloody heap of flesh, until eventually someone must have stumbled on her body. But by then, it was all over.

After that, there had been no more blood. Apart from the mess, it was too unpredictable. Every physical touch left a trace, leading to the risk of identification by some overzealous forensic team. Suffocation required no direct contact with the victim, alive or dead. And there was no blood. Given that death was unavoidable if the victim was to remain silent, suffocation had to be the most sensible option. With a suitable method established, it was simply a matter of selecting the next victim.

Unsuspecting women proved surprisingly easy to come by.

1

Since her retirement to York, Mandy had taken to walking along the towpath as soon as she woke up in the morning. It was important to keep to a routine so, regardless of the weather, she went out every day before breakfast. The walk was a pleasant one, and she enjoyed observing the changes of the seasons. The trees were beginning to turn golden and brown, and the sky was overcast more often than not. Glancing down at the river bank that morning, her attention was caught by a blue creature moving gently up and down on the water. Looking more closely, she realised that what she was looking at was not an unusually brightly coloured fish, nor even a strange bird, but an item of clothing caught in the fronds of a river weed. As she stared at it, she was shocked to see what looked like a hand protruding from one end of a blue sleeve. She closed her eyes, and let out an involuntary cry on opening them again, because she had not been mistaken. Concealed within a sodden sleeve was a human arm, perhaps still attached to a corpse hidden below the water.

Mandy looked around frantically for someone to help her but she was alone on the towpath. With trembling fingers, she pulled out her phone and called the emergency services to report what she had spotted in the river.

‘Yes, a dead body… yes, I’m sure it’s dead,’ she faltered, after giving her name and location as precisely as she could. ‘That is, I can only see one hand, but that’s definitely dead. That’s all I can see of it, a hand. Everything else is out of sight under the water… no, I haven’t touched anything… yes, I’m sure it’s dead.’ She did not need to look at the hand again to describe it in detail. ‘The skin’s kind of green and grey.’

It seemed to take a long time for the police to arrive. Meanwhile, a couple of other people had walked past along the towpath. Mandy made no attempt to detain them. She could not bear to draw attention to her horrible discovery, which might entail her having to find it and look at it again. In addition, she had a vague notion that the site ought not to be disturbed before the police had a chance to examine it for clues. There could be a significant footprint in the earth that would lead investigating detectives to the killer, assuming there had been a murder, and someone stepping forward to peer at the body might trample all over such vital evidence. So Mandy stood beside the river at the side of the towpath, like a mute sentinel guarding her hidden plunder, while pedestrians and cyclists passed by oblivious of her macabre vigil.

After a few moments she calmed down. Only then did it occur to her that she could have made a stupid blunder. What she had spotted in the water might be the arm of a life-sized khaki-coloured hand, or perhaps a mannequin from a shop window. But she had summoned the police, and it was too late to change her mind. She had given them her name and address, besides which they would be able to trace her from her phone number. All she could do now was wait for the police to arrive and if it turned out she had made an embarrassing fuss over nothing, that was just too bad. There was nothing she could do about it now. The police could hardly arrest her for making a mistake.

At last, a pair of uniformed police appeared and almost immediately the dreary quiet towpath erupted into a scene of bustling commotion. Within minutes, access had been blocked off to prevent members of the public from approaching, while white-clad officers began busily examining the river bank. Mandy was escorted away for questioning by a young policewoman who looked very smart and stern in her uniform.

‘Is it a body?’ Mandy enquired, although the teeming police presence had already confirmed her suspicion.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘How did she die?’

‘She?’ the young policewoman repeated. ‘How do you know the deceased person is a woman?’

Mandy shook her head, struck by a horrible thought. If the police thought she knew too much, they might suspect she was somehow involved in the death.

‘I didn’t – I don’t –’ she stammered. ‘I just thought – it didn’t look like something a man would wear. That bright blue, I mean.’

Miraculously, someone brought her a cup of tea and wrapped a silver sheet around her shoulders. Although she had not been aware of feeling cold, she realised that she was shivering and was grateful for their care. She sipped the hot tea and tried to control her shaking.

‘I walk along here every morning, at about the same time,’ she explained, when the policewoman asked her if she was ready to give a statement. ‘It’s important to get some daily exercise, and it’s so lovely along here, watching the changing seasons. It’s a really nice place to walk, well, most of the time. Anyway, this morning I was walking along, like I do every day, and I just happened to notice the blue jumper. I thought it was an unusual fish at first, or a bird, but when I looked, I saw there was a hand –’ she broke off with a shudder. ‘I realised it must be a dead body and called you straightaway. And that’s all I know.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you think she meant to drown herself, or did she fall in by accident?’

‘As yet we have no idea how the victim came to be in the river,’ the officer replied quietly.

The policewoman’s matter-of-fact tone calmed Mandy, and she stopped shivering and tried to breathe deeply and slowly. The most likely explanation of the tragedy was that the dead woman had been drunk, and had stumbled into the water while staggering along the towpath in the small hours. It was a frightful way to die, but perhaps she had been too befuddled to grasp the danger she was in. If you were unconscious when you died, presumably you just stopped breathing without knowing anything about it. In any case, the shock of being immersed in freezing cold water might have killed her before she had time to realise what was happening.

‘Let’s hope we all go like that,’ she said.

The policewoman looked surprised and Mandy realised she had spoken aloud.

‘I mean –’ she stammered, ‘I mean I hope she was too drunk to know what was happening to her. I assume she was drunk, and that was why she fell in the river.’

‘It seems likely,’ the police officer replied with a noncommittal nod.

‘I guess we’ll never know for sure,’ Mandy said.

The policewoman gave her a curious look. ‘Maybe not,’ she said.

Mandy nodded. ‘I suppose finding out how and why she died is what you do. I mean, that’s your job, isn’t it?’

The policewoman nodded but did not reply. Feeling foolish, Mandy cleared her throat. ‘I’d better be going then,’ she said.

‘If you’re sure there’s nothing else you can tell us?’

Mandy shook her head. ‘There isn’t anything else. Will you tell me what happened? How she died, I mean.’

The dead woman was a stranger, yet Mandy felt a strange sense of kinship with her. If it hadn’t been for Mandy, the corpse might have lain in the river for weeks, slowly eroded by water insects and animals, prey to maggots and rats and other scavengers.

‘I’m sure the media will report it,’ the policewoman responded, becoming brusque in her manner now that Mandy had concluded her brief statement.

‘I wasn’t being inquisitive,’ Mandy tried to explain. ‘I was just – concerned, that’s all.’

The policewoman smiled and thanked her for her time before turning away.

2

Geraldine had not long been at her desk when Detective Chief Inspector Eileen Duncan called a briefing. As the team listened, Geraldine stared at Eileen’s ferocious expression with a mixture of admiration and concern. The senior officer’s dedication to her work was unquestionable, but she had an unfortunate tendency to bark aggressively at the team. Everyone knew that complicated investigations could take time to clear up, and the Serious Crime Command in York had a reputation for solving crimes swiftly, so Geraldine was not convinced that Eileen’s pushy attitude was actually helpful.

Scowling around the room, Eileen announced that a woman’s body had been pulled out of the river. The consensus among the police officers present was that the woman had probably been drunk when she had stumbled into the river, while making her way home.

‘Even sober you could trip on the towpath in the dark and fall in,’ Eileen agreed, her large square jaw set in a determined line. ‘She might even have been unconscious when she fell in the water.’

‘That would have been a kindness,’ Geraldine murmured to herself. ‘Drowning must be a terrifying way to die.’

Although they had not yet determined that the woman’s death had been anything other than an unfortunate accident, several unusual features at the scene meant that it was being treated as possibly suspicious.

‘Until we know more, we have to remain open minded about the cause of death,’ Eileen said.

‘It’s odd that no bag or purse has been found,’ a constable said.

‘And she had no keys or money on her,’ someone else added.

‘All of that could be lying on the river bed,’ Ian said.

A search was under way along the river bank for the dead woman’s bag, but it might have sunk without trace, weighted down with coins and keys. Leaving the room, Geraldine smiled at Ariadne, who sat opposite her. As detective sergeants working on a murder team, they were both accustomed to answering the summons to work at any time

‘At least this report came in the morning when we were already at work,’ Geraldine said as they walked along the corridor together. ‘The older I get, the less I appreciate receiving a summons in the middle of the night.’

‘It must be particularly annoying to be disturbed at night if you’re sleeping with someone else,’ Ariadne replied pointedly.

Geraldine did not answer. She and her colleague, Detective Inspector Ian Peterson, had so far held back from announcing to their colleagues at the police station that he was living with her. They had not yet admitted to anyone else that, after many years of friendship, they were now romantically involved. Since he had moved in with her, she had been trying to see as little of him as possible at work. When he smiled at her, she sometimes had to look away, afraid that her face would betray her emotions. A few of her colleagues must have noticed that neither she nor Ian went to the pub in the evening any more, but no one had commented on their absence, at least not to their faces.

Ariadne’s eyes were as bright and black as Geraldine’s and now they gleamed with barely suppressed curiosity.

‘So tell me, what’s going on with Ian?’

‘I don’t know what you mean. Nothing’s going on.’

‘Listen, I won’t tell anyone if you’d rather it wasn’t common knowledge, but I thought you two were –’

‘Were what?’

‘I thought you were an item these days?’

Doing her best to hide her irritation, Geraldine laughed. ‘I don’t know what gave you that idea.’

Ariadne sniffed and looked decidedly put out, and Geraldine turned away to hide her confusion. She was aware that she and Ian could not delay much longer before speaking to Eileen to explain their new relationship. But it was a long time since she had been romantically involved with anyone, and she was afraid of doing anything that might disturb their private happiness.

‘You can tell me to mind my own business if you like, but don’t lie to me,’ Ariadne said.

‘I thought I was telling you to mind your own business,’ Geraldine replied quietly. ‘Look, whatever’s going on between Ian and me is just that, between Ian and me. If there is anything going on, and I’m not saying there is, then we’re not ready to talk about it with anyone else yet. I don’t want to fall out with you, so can we please leave it at that?’

By the time they reached their desks, a slight awkwardness had arisen between them. Geraldine regretted her brusque response to Ariadne’s questions, and decided to approach her friend at the next opportunity and try to explain her reluctance to talk about her private life although she was not sure she understood her own attitude herself. Before agreeing to Ian moving in with her, Geraldine had insisted they remain discreet about their new relationship.

‘You know how people gossip,’ she had said. ‘We have to remain strictly professional in our relations at work. Once we get back home, it’s different, but at work, we need to continue as before.’

‘You know we ought to tell the DCI,’ Ian had replied.

‘What we do outside of work is no one else’s business.’

Ian had not been as concerned as she was to keep their relationship quiet, but he had accepted Geraldine’s conditions cheerfully enough, and they settled easily into their new way of life. Still, Geraldine knew that they would not be able to keep their affair to themselves for long, and Ariadne’s curiosity made it clear that their colleagues were already growing curious.

3

Ariadne gave Geraldine a sympathetic smile when she announced that she was going to the mortuary to view the body that had been retrieved from the river that morning.

‘Have fun,’ Ariadne called out to her as she stood up.

Grabbing her bag, Geraldine hurried away, relieved that her friend was no longer upset with her. She wondered if she was unnatural in caring more about her friend’s opinion of her than the prospect of viewing a dead body but, unlike some of her colleagues, Geraldine had never been disturbed by the sight of cadavers. On the contrary, she found them fascinating, not out of some existential curiosity about death itself, although that was a question that troubled her when she had nothing else to occupy her thoughts. What she appreciated about attending a post mortem was the evidence a murder victim unwittingly revealed about how he or she had died.

The blonde anatomical technology assistant, Avril, greeted Geraldine with a weary smile.

‘Looks like another one for you,’ she said, handing Geraldine a mask. ‘This one doesn’t smell too fresh, I’m afraid.’

‘Do they ever?’ Geraldine replied.

Avril wrinkled her nose. ‘She’d been in the water for a while when they found her.’

Geraldine nodded. The victim could have been in the water far longer if she hadn’t chanced to be spotted by a passerby taking a walk along the towpath by the river. Still, it made no difference to the dead woman now. With a nod to Avril, she went in to see the pathologist. In her early forties, Geraldine was only a few years younger than Jonah Hetherington, yet she found him reassuringly avuncular. It could have had something to do with his being married, and the father of a teenage son, while she was single. He brushed a curl of ginger hair from his face with the back of a glove, leaving a faint red smear of a stranger’s blood across his forehead. Had he been tall and blond, like Ian, the marking on his face might have given him the appearance of a warrior from a previous age, perhaps a Viking preparing for battle. As it was, he more closely resembled a clown, with his plump face and wispy hair, below which his blue eyes twinkled in greeting.

Geraldine waited good-naturedly for him to crack one of his usual jokes. ‘We must stop meeting like this,’ or ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’ or even, ‘Of all the bloody joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.’ But on this occasion, he merely nodded at her without speaking.

‘Was this an accidental drowning, or do you think we need to investigate?’ Geraldine asked.

Jonah raised his eyebrows, oddly orange against his pale freckled face. ‘What would you say if I told you she didn’t drown?’

‘I’d ask you how she died,’ Geraldine replied, with exaggerated patience.

The pathologist smiled before launching into his findings. ‘There’s no pulmonary oedema, and no sign of haemorrhaging in the sinuses or airways or lungs. If she had been conscious when she entered the water, she would have struggled to breathe, which would have caused pressure trauma in the sinuses, airways and lungs. There is no evidence of bleeding, and no debris from the water which would almost certainly have been sucked into her sinuses and lungs while she was attempting to breathe.’ He paused.

‘In other words, she was dead before she entered the water,’ Geraldine said.

He nodded. ‘Possibly some time before, probably long enough for the body to lose rigidity so that it would have been easier to transport.’ He frowned. ‘I’d say she was dead for at least thirty hours before she was deposited in the river, maybe longer. That’s just an initial impression, but I’m confident further analysis will confirm my estimate.’

‘Can you be more specific?’

‘It’s impossible to be more precise than that.’ Jonah’s tense expression relaxed into a resigned smile. ‘Now if this was CSI or some such TV programme, I would pin the time of death down to the nearest hour for you. The nearest minute. And of course my own conclusion would be confirmed by her watch, smashed at the exact instant of her death. Unfortunately I’m not a glamorous star of fiction, but a tubby pug-faced pathologist working in the real world, and it’s all rather messy and unsatisfactory. Don’t blame me. I hate disappointing you like this, but I’m not responsible for reality.’

‘So someone deposited the body in the water after she died?’

‘Yes, and before you ask, cause of death was suffocation.’

Geraldine’s eyebrows rose. ‘Perhaps she was dumped in the river in an attempt to conceal signs that she had been suffocated?’

‘I can only tell you what happened. Speculating about why it happened is your job, not mine.’

‘But you’re sure that was how she died?’

Jonah nodded. ‘As sure as I can be.’

‘So were there signs of suffocation that the killer failed to conceal?’

He nodded again, pointing to a small evidence bag. ‘We found microscopic fibres in her sinuses and airways that she had inhaled, suggesting something was held over her mouth and nose before she expired, and there were a few of the same fibres still lodged under her fingernails. It’s not absolutely conclusive but yes, that appears to be how she died.’

‘Appears to be?’

‘She might have covered her mouth and nose with a cloth of some sort herself, perhaps to protect herself from a noxious smell, or she could have been lying face down on something, and inhaled the fibres accidentally. But given that she was dead before she went in the water, and there is no other obvious cause of death, it seems fairly likely that she was suffocated by a killer who then disposed of the body. There is no conclusive physical evidence to confirm whether the killing was deliberate or accidental.’

‘But if it wasn’t murder, how did she end up in the river?’

Jonah inclined his head.

‘So the killer thought that being immersed in water, the evidence of how she died would be washed away,’ Geraldine concluded her train of thought.

‘He might not have realised there was any evidence to destroy. Certainly nothing was visible. But it could be the killer dumped her in the river thinking she wouldn’t be discovered for a while, and eventually even the microscopic evidence we found on the cadaver would have been obliterated.’

‘He? You think the killer was a man?’

‘He or she. We could be looking for a female killer. But the killer would need to be strong enough to carry a body.’

‘How long was she in the water?’

He shrugged. ‘A few days.’ He stared down at the bloated body and heaved a sigh. ‘She was quite young.’

He turned the body over and Geraldine studied the mottled grey cadaver lying in front of them, resembling a snake in human shape. The dead woman’s fair hair was snarled and matted, making it look shorter than it actually was. When she had been alive, it must have reached down to her shoulders. Individual features were difficult to visualise. Somewhere in the greying green oozing mess that barely covered her skull lay clues to her appearance, but an untrained observer could only speculate about what she had looked like.

‘Her head was crawling,’ Jonah said. ‘She’s not a pretty sight even now, but –’ He grimaced. ‘We’ve cleaned her up as much as we can for the time being, but we’ll have to work on her before we can ask anyone to identify her.’ He shook his head. ‘You can’t begin to imagine what she looked like.’

‘I’d rather not try,’ Geraldine replied.

The dead woman must have looked disgusting if even the pathologist had been repulsed.

‘We haven’t found her bag yet,’ Geraldine went on more briskly. ‘We don’t know who she was. What about her clothes? Do they tell us anything?’

Jonah shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. She entered the water fully dressed in a blue jumper, jeans and trainers, none of which are in any way unique.’

Geraldine frowned. ‘Had she been sexually assaulted?’

‘Not as far as we can tell, although it’s difficult to be sure of anything just yet,’ Jonah replied solemnly, his customary good humour clearly shaken by the sight of the ravaged face lying on the table in front of them.

4

She was the one he had chosen and, like a fool, she had allowed herself to believe they were happy. When he had told her he loved her, she had believed him without question. Now, seeing his arm around another woman’s shoulders, a veil seemed to lift, as though it had been fluttering over her eyes ever since their wedding day. Remembering how happy she had been then, her eyes watered. She had convinced herself they had been married in the sight of God, even if her husband had refused to have the wedding ceremony in her church. Abandoning her faith like that, at least outwardly, was another change marriage had wrought in her life.

Her feet carried her across the wet pavement, seeming to act independently of her frozen will. The weather had turned chilly although it was not yet winter, and trees lined the street with burnished yellow and gold, the kerb littered with an early fall of brown leaves. Reaching the shelter of a shop front, she stood perfectly still, scarcely breathing.

Watching them.

It had been bound to happen again, sooner or later. Looking at them together, Bella realised she had been waiting for this moment for a long time. Waiting and fearing. Her husband’s regular visits to the health club, and his occasional trips away from home staying out all night, had been obvious signs that she had refused to recognise.

One glimpse of them together changed everything, her carefully constructed life swept away by a single gesture. As she waited to see what they were going do next, her thoughts spun wildly. The scene playing out across the street, and her response to it, wouldn’t only affect her own life. At thirteen, Zoe was going through what her teachers called ‘a phase’, whatever that meant. They assured Bella that her daughter was being a typical teenager and would ‘grow out of it when she was ready’, their comments so similar she suspected they had prepared in advance what they were going to say.

‘It’s all a natural part of growing up,’ one of them had added, with a tinge of impatience.

Bella didn’t remember having been so aggressive and secretive with her own parents at that age, but now it wasn’t only her daughter’s attitude she had to worry about. She wondered if Zoe suspected there were problems in her parents’ marriage. Focused on what was happening just a few yards away, she barely noticed other people scurrying through the rain falling between her and the couple across the street. Holding his umbrella over her, he inclined his head to listen, and smiled at something she said. Anyone else watching them would probably admire his manners as the edge of the umbrella dripped on his shoulders, while she remained dry.

And all the time, out of sight across the road, Bella stood, huddled in a doorway, shock holding her physically upright. She felt as if she was under water, struggling to fight her way up to the air so she could breathe again.

There was nothing for it but to carry on as normal. Seething inwardly, she pulled herself together, finished her shopping and went home, bedraggled and stunned. As she was preparing the dinner that evening, she heard the front door slam. A few moments later John strolled into the kitchen, and dropped his sports bag on the floor.

‘It’s cold out there,’ he grumbled. ‘How long till dinner’s ready? I’m starving.’

Her face felt like a mask, her smile was so rigid, but John grinned at her as though nothing had changed between them. In a way, it hadn’t. Certainly he had altered very little in the thirteen years they had been together. Nearing forty, he looked about ten years younger, the tinge of white on his temples barely noticeable against his fair hair. Other than that, the only changes in him were a barely perceptible thickening around his middle, and a few lines around his eyes that made him look as though he was permanently smiling.

What with motherhood, and losing both her parents, Bella hadn’t aged so well. Her hair seemed to be thinner than when they had first met, so now she wore it short. Everyone said politely that it suited her. Only her mother had been honest, telling Bella that her new hairstyle made her look old. Her mother had been right. All the same, Bella kept her hair short because it was easier to look after. Gradually her mother had lost the power to speak. Probably she had continued to dislike her daughter’s hair, but now the one person who had cared enough to tell Bella the truth was forever silent.

‘What are you making for us tonight?’ John asked, as though he was genuinely interested.

‘Lamb hot pot.’

He leaned down to kiss her cheek, and she wondered if he had always been so oblivious to her feelings.

‘It’ll be ready in half an hour,’ she said.

A moment later she heard him going upstairs. With a sigh, she carried her husband’s sports bag to the washing machine and put his clothes and towel in to wash, before calling her husband and daughter down for supper. Zoe took her tray without a word and turned to leave. Bella had given up remonstrating with her for eating in her room.

‘I need to do my homework,’ was the only reason Zoe gave.

Zoe’s figure told a different story. Beneath her baggy school uniform it was difficult to see quite how much weight she had lost, but any attempt to discuss it with her was met with a sullen glare. Every evening she would take her supper up to her room, and later she would bring her empty plate to the kitchen. Bella had checked her room furtively several times while she was out, but found no trace of the food Zoe had almost certainly not eaten. Bella suspected it had been flushed down the toilet.

‘Where are you off to?’ John asked with fake cheerfulness, as though he hadn’t noticed Zoe no longer ate with her parents.

‘As if you give a shit about what happens to her,’ Bella thought, but she said nothing.

‘I’m going upstairs. I’ve got homework.’

‘Don’t work too hard,’ he told her.

John would have denied that was a deliberate dig at his wife but, at the very least, it was insensitive. For over six months Bella had done nothing, after spending four years visiting her mother every day in a care home and then the hospice where she had died a lingering death. In many ways the end had come as a relief, but it had left Bella’s weekdays empty, with John out at work. Eventually she planned to look for a job, but after such a long break it was going to be difficult to find anything, and she kept finding excuses to put off registering with an employment agency. Instead, she scoured the papers for posts she wasn’t eligible to apply for, and told herself it was impossible to find a suitable job. In the meantime, John insisted he was happy for her to stay at home.

‘You’re lucky your mother does such a good job of looking after you,’ he told Zoe.

‘I don’t need looking after,’ Zoe muttered. ‘I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, and I always have been.’

‘So we are a family of liars,’ Bella thought.

After Zoe had disappeared upstairs, John and Bella ate in front of the television as they always did, the words of strangers shielding them from each other. It was easier that way. And all the while Bella was wondering how she was going to get through the night without betraying her feelings. Neither original nor inventive, the sole excuse she could think of was to say that she had a headache. Armed with a lie of her own, she went upstairs. She needn’t have bothered to wrack her brains because as John climbed into bed beside her, he turned away.

‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he mumbled. ‘It’s just that I’m dog tired tonight.’

Suspecting she knew the reason for his exhaustion, Bella welcomed the reprieve. Whatever happened, she could not bear him to make love to her when she knew what he had done to another woman only that day. Somehow she had to put an end to his life of sin and win back his affection, but she did not know how to go about it.

‘You look tired,’ John told her the following morning.

‘I didn’t sleep well last night,’ she admitted.

That, at least, was true.

Brushing her hair off her face, she remembered that she hadn’t cleaned her teeth that morning. Something else John hadn’t noticed. But it was a while since he had kissed her on the lips.

‘What are you up to today?’ he asked.

Almost any answer would have served. He wasn’t interested in her plans. She could hardly blame him. Between shopping and housework and looking after the garden, not forgetting the laundry, her life didn’t exactly make for fascinating listening.

‘Is everything all right?’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘You look – well, you don’t look like your normal self.’

‘It’s nothing really, but I think I might have a bladder infection,’ she said, preparing to fend off any attempt at intimacy.

‘You should get that checked.’

‘Yes, I’m planning to go to the doctor.’

‘Well, make sure you do.’

‘Oh, it’s nothing. I’ve had it before. It just stings a bit, down there.’

He nodded. ‘As long as it’s nothing serious.’

Could he really be so obtuse? It never seemed to occur to him that she might be mourning for her mother. And he obviously had no idea that she had seen him with another woman. Instead of supporting her while she had been grieving, he had been off chasing someone else.

‘Oh yes, they’ll give me a course of antibiotics and it’ll be sorted in a week or two.’

She fully intended to spin this alleged infection out for longer than a fortnight, after which she would tell him she had her period. That would get her through the next month, buying her enough time to find out exactly what her husband was up to. It was still possible she was giving in to groundless suspicion, but when she thought about what she had seen, there seemed only one explanation. Nothing could alter the fact that she had seen him with his latest victim, his arm slung casually around her shoulders in a gesture of intimacy.

Whatever happened, she had to save her husband from his evil compulsion, which had already cost more than one woman her life.

5

Geraldine stared miserably at a pile of papers on her desk. Nothing they did now could help the poor woman who had been sliced open, sewn up and stored in a drawer at the mortuary, awaiting release for burial. All the police could do for her was discover her identity so that her family could bury her with as much dignity as possible. Other than that, they would do everything in their power to track down her killer and bring him to justice. Someone had placed a piece of cloth – perhaps a pillow – over the dead woman’s mouth and nose, pressing it down until she stopped breathing. It might have been any old rag that could have been boiled, discarded, buried or burned after carrying out its fatal operation. But if the murder weapon was impossible to trace, there had to be another way to trace the killer, and Geraldine would not rest until she found it and tracked him down.

By contrast to the elusive nature of the murder weapon, the means by which the body had been transported down to the river should have been easy to discover. It was hard to believe a body could be carried along the towpath and thrown in the river without leaving any tracks at all, yet so far scene of crime officers had drawn a blank. There were no unaccounted for footprints leading to the edge of the river bank near where the body had been found, and no signs of anything having been wheeled or lugged down to the water’s edge. The fence on the far side of the path was solid. The only conclusion seemed to be that the body had been deposited in the water somewhere further along the river, or else had been transported to its final resting place by boat. In either case, it must have been thrown in the river in the night when there was no one else around to witness what was happening.

‘Given that the body was in the water for a number of days,’ Eileen said with an angry frown, ‘it could have been dropped anywhere along that stretch of the river, quite possibly outside the built-up area, where no one was likely to be watching. There are stretches of water that are not overlooked from either bank, and if the body was deposited at night, there would have been almost no risk of being observed.’

‘But whether it was in a boat or floating on the water, how could the body have travelled along the river without anyone seeing?’ Ariadne asked.

Eileen scowled, as though the team were deliberately concealing evidence that might expose the killer. When she had first moved to York, Geraldine had been disconcerted by the detective chief inspector’s flashes of temper. Before her own demotion from inspector to sergeant, Geraldine had been in line for promotion. In breaking the law to save her twin sister’s life, she had risked her entire career, and was fortunate that she still had a job at all. She liked to think she would have treated her team, had she led one, with more respect than Eileen accorded them, but she would never find out how effective she might have been as a detective chief inspector. After a while she had come to realise that her colleagues accepted Eileen’s irascibility as an expression of the frustration they all shared from time to time during the course of a murder investigation. No one took much notice of her outbursts.

‘Well? Does no one have anything useful to add?’ Eileen demanded, glaring around the room. ‘Nothing at all? Are we all completely out of our depth here?’

No one attempted to crack a pun about the depth of the river where the body had been found.

‘We need more information, not more chatter,’ Eileen snapped, although no one had spoken. ‘So let’s get on with it.’

A team was set up to question everyone who lived or worked along the river, or belonged to one of the boating clubs nestling at the water’s edge, and cyclists and pedestrians were questioned on the towpath. No one had noticed anything suspicious. Finally, a report was turned up that could be relevant. A woman who might match the description of the body had gone missing five days earlier.

‘Reported missing five days ago, she could be our victim,’ Eileen murmured thoughtfully.

Geraldine was sent to advise the missing woman’s husband that there was a chance his wife’s body had been found. While it was unlikely he would be able to identify her, they only needed a sample of her DNA to confirm or refute the identification. Greg Robinson was an electrician, employed in rewiring an old house. Before Geraldine could speak to him she had to get past the householder, a stout middle-aged woman who was reluctant to let her enter the property.

‘He’s here,’ the woman admitted grudgingly, ‘but he’s rewiring the house and can’t be interrupted. We’ve been waiting long enough for him to come, and now he’s finally here, I don’t want him disturbed.’

‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist,’ Geraldine replied quietly. ‘We are looking into a serious matter, and no private concern can be allowed to hinder the investigation. I’m very sorry, but you’re going to have to step aside or I will have to caution you for obstructing a police officer.’

Grumbling under her breath, the woman jerked her head in the direction of the kitchen where Greg was working. He turned when she called his name, his green eyes alert with alarm, and Geraldine saw that he was probably in his thirties, tall and thin.

‘The police?’ he repeated when she introduced herself. ‘Is it about Angie? Have you found her?’ His voice shook slightly. ‘Is she all right?’

When Geraldine asked him to sit down, his demeanour altered. His shoulders drooped and he shook his head.

‘What is it? What’s happened? Tell me. I’ve been going out of my mind with worry. Just tell me she’s all right.’

‘Greg, we don’t know if we’ve found your wife, but a body has been recovered from the river –’

‘No, no!’

If he was putting on an act, it was certainly convincing. Hearing the cry, the householder came in. She looked furious.

‘Is everything all right? What’s the problem now? Don’t tell me you’re not going to get it done on time. I’ve got the decorator booked to start the day after tomorrow –’

‘I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to borrow Greg for a while,’ Geraldine said.

‘What? But he’s not finished. You can see for yourself, there are wires dangling all over the place.’ She turned to Greg. ‘You can’t leave before the job’s done.’

Greg followed Geraldine out of the house without a word, shrill complaints echoing after them as they walked down the path. Geraldine explained exactly what she needed from him. As he lived quite close to the police station, she followed him home and went inside with him. He left her in a small square living room, and she heard him bounding upstairs. Glancing around the living room as she waited, Geraldine’s attention was caught by a wedding picture on the mantelpiece. She recognised Greg instantly in the smiling groom, but the beaming bride bore little resemblance to the bloated corpse that had been pulled from the river. She sighed, registering how happy they both looked.

‘Here you are,’ Greg said, clattering downstairs and entering the living room clutching a wooden hairbrush with fair hair caught in the bristles. ‘I can give you her toothbrush as well if you want, but –’

‘But if she comes home, she’s going to need it,’ Geraldine completed the sentence for him. ‘I hope the woman we’ve found isn’t your wife, Greg, but there’s only one way to be sure. But this is enough,’ she added, holding up the hairbrush which she had dropped into an evidence bag.

He nodded. ‘It’s her hair,’ he muttered helplessly. ‘It’s Angie’s hair.’ He looked up at Geraldine. ‘Please, please, don’t let it be her.’

6

As usual, Zoe grabbed her plate without sitting down and turned to leave the kitchen.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ her father asked, eyeing her with a fake smile. ‘Why don’t you sit with us for once, and have your supper here?’

‘Why would I want to do that?’

Zoe’s mother was watching them fearfully, as though mutely begging them not to lose their tempers, but if her father was upset by Zoe’s aggressive tone, he didn’t show it.

‘Because we’re a family,’ he replied evenly. ‘We hardly seem to see anything of you these days. We never sit together, and it would be nice to talk to you once in a while.’

‘What is there to talk about?’

‘We could talk about you,’ he replied patiently. ‘About what we’ve all been up to.’

Zoe’s mother let out a curious grunt, which he ignored.

‘That won’t take long,’ Zoe replied. ‘I’ve been bored out of my skull at school all day. You’ve been at work, probably bored too. Mum’s been sitting around the house, bored. Nothing interesting ever happens and we’re all bored. So what is there to talk about?’

She turned away.

‘Just sit down,’ he replied. ‘Please. Just sit with us.’

‘Why? What’s the point?’

‘The point is that it might be nice to sit together as a family, and talk to each other. So sit down.’

‘Or what?’ she replied. ‘Are you going to shout at me?’

They both knew she was deliberately goading him. For a second, her father didn’t respond. Then, with a sudden burst of energy, he sprang to his feet, his face flushed with anger. Zoe’s mother reached out and put a restraining hand on his arm. Distracted, he glanced down and shook her off, but by the time he raised his eyes, Zoe had already reached the door. Her heart pounding, she dashed across the hall, raced up the stairs and slammed her door. Her bedroom was allegedly her own private space, but there was no lock on the door and her parents could walk in whenever they wanted. She knew her mother went in there while she was at school, because she often found her duvet straightened, and her clothes gathered up from the floor, but her mother seemed impervious to her protests.

‘You say it’s my room, but you just walk in whenever you feel like it,’ she complained. ‘You have no right to come in here when I’m out of the house.’

Her mother either lied outright and denied having gone in there, or else replied that she had every right to enter any room in her own house. So even her own bedroom didn’t belong to Zoe. Whatever either of her parents said could not alter the fact that she was a prisoner in their home.

She sat down on her bed, listening, but there was no sound of anyone following her up the stairs. She picked at her food, eating a few peas without touching anything else. Finally she took her plate to the bathroom. At least there she could lock the door. Mashing up her food, she flushed it down the toilet. If there were rats living in the sewers, they must be growing fat on her mother’s cooking. Having finished her nightly ritual, she slumped on the floor, leaned back against the side of the bath, and considered her situation. Whichever way she looked at it, her life was intolerable. Worse than endless pestering from teachers was the claustrophobic atmosphere at home. There seemed to be no end to it, and there was no let-up. Day after day life stretched ahead of her until she was finally old enough to leave her parents’ house. That day couldn’t come soon enough, as far as she was concerned. In the meantime, she had to endure her current circumstances for years and years, feeling as though there was a volcano inside her head, waiting to explode. She had nothing to look forward to, and her life and youth were slipping away. She was already a teenager, and she had nothing to show for the time she had spent in so-called living. The other pupils in her class at school were all idiots or bullies or swots, and there was no one she could talk to honestly about her intolerable existence.

From downstairs came the sound of raised voices. Her parents were arguing again. All at once, she knew what she had to do. Her father had yelled at her for the last time. With a snarl of frustration, she grabbed her wash bag, dashed back to her room, and closed the door. Seizing her rucksack, she shook it upside down, letting her school books drop on to her bed. Sweeping them to the floor, she began stuffing clothes into her bag. Satisfied she had as much as she could carry, she ran lightly downstairs. Through the small window in the hall she could see it was drizzling outside, so she grabbed her school coat and an old knitted hat that was lying on the floor in the hall and ran out of the house, closing the front door quietly behind her. It would soon be dark and she hurried along the street, slowing down only when she was out of breath from running. At last she reached her school friend’s house and rang the bell. There was no answer. She knocked on the door, but still no one opened it. It had not occurred to her that her friend might be out.