Stephen Leather - Nightshade

There were four more uniformed officers standing in the kitchen. ‘Will you get the hell out of the house — this is a crime scene, not a bloody meeting hall!’ shouted Wilkinson.

He went into the sitting room. There were another four uniformed officers there, one of them a sergeant that Wilkinson recognised. Denis Tyler, a twenty-year veteran of the Sussex police and an old school copper. Standing by the window was Aaron Fisher, white-faced and looking as if he was about to throw up. Sitting on an armchair by the TV was a woman in her twenties with an orange complexion and dyed blonde hair that looked as if it had been hacked with a breadknife.

There was a man on the sofa. He had greasy unkempt hair and a hooked nose over thin, bloodless lips. The man and the woman had their hands cuffed behind them.

‘What’s the story, Denis?’ asked the superintendent.

‘Eric Lucas and Candice Matthews. The girl’s upstairs.’ He pointed at Lucas. ‘He strangled her.’

‘Have they been cautioned?’

The sergeant shook his head.

Lucas slumped forward and Wilkinson saw that the back of his head was bloody. ‘How did that happen?’ he asked the sergeant.

‘They were like that when we got here.’

Wilkinson looked over at Fisher. ‘Inspector Hopkins hit him with a spade,’ said the detective.

‘And he hit me, too!’ shouted the woman. ‘Bloody animal, he is.’

‘Where is Inspector Hopkins?’

‘The stairs,’ said Fisher.

‘I want to go to the hospital,’ said the woman.

‘That’s not going to happen,’ said the superintendent. ‘We’ll get you a doctor at the station.’

‘I’m bleeding to death here,’ said the woman. ‘Have you seen my leg? I know my rights. I want to see a doctor.’

The superintendent nodded at Sergeant Tyler. ‘Get her out of here, Denis.’ He looked at Sergeant McKillop. ‘Put her in the car.’

‘He hit my Eric, too. Smashed his head in with a spade.’

The two sergeants reached down and helped her to her feet. ‘Police brutality, that’s what it is,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I can’t walk.’ She let herself go limp and the sergeants had to let her fall back onto the sofa. ‘If you make me walk, I’ll sue. I’ve got my human rights, I have.’

‘There’s an ambulance just arrived, get the paramedics to look at her,’ Wilkinson said to Tyler. ‘But no hospital. She can be treated at the station.’

‘What about Eric?’ said the woman. ‘He might have concussion. He needs a brain scan, that’s what he needs.’

The superintendent gritted his teeth. ‘Get them to look at him, then both of them to the station,’ he said.

As he walked back into the hallway, two paramedics appeared at the front door. One of them was holding a portable trolley. ‘Do me a favour, guys, and check out the two suspects in there,’ he said. ‘Do whatever first aid you need but I want them in the station ASAP.’

‘They said the girl’s dead,’ said the elder of the two paramedics.

‘Yeah. She’s upstairs.’

‘To be honest, we’d rather take care of her first. If that’s okay with you.’

The superintendent was about to argue, but then he saw the haunted looks on the men’s faces. Like everybody else they’d been following the case and hoping that the girl would be found and returned to her parents. He understood exactly how they felt. And if he had been in their place he wouldn’t have rushed to treat her killers either. He nodded. ‘Sure.’

He headed for the stairs and the two paramedics followed him. Inspector Hopkins was sitting on the stairs, his cheeks wet with tears. He looked up at the superintendent with unseeing eyes. There was an unlit cigarette in one hand.

‘Are you okay?’ asked the superintendent.

Hopkins shrugged. ‘Not really.’ The hand holding the cigarette was trembling.

Wilkinson gestured at the two paramedics. ‘They need to get upstairs to deal with Bella,’ he said. He put his hand on the inspector’s shoulder. ‘You need to move. Come on, let’s sit down in the kitchen. And put that cigarette away.’

Hopkins stood up and followed the superintendent down the hallway to the kitchen. The paramedics tramped upstairs with the trolley.

The superintendent pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and motioned for the inspector to sit down. Hopkins slumped down and put his head in his hands.

‘What happened to them?’ asked the superintendent. ‘Lucas and the woman?’

‘I hit them with a spade,’ said Hopkins.

‘You did what?’

‘There wasn’t time to be nice about it,’ said Hopkins. ‘She was in my way and he was drowning the girl.’

‘But a bloody spade, Dave.’

‘Call it a shovel if that makes it easier,’ said Hopkins. He ran a hand through his hair. ‘He was drowning her.’

‘So you hit him over the head with a spade?’

Hopkins shrugged.

‘You’ve got to pull yourself together, Dave,’ said the superintendent. ‘If they allege police brutality, Professional Standards will be all over you.’

‘Fuck them,’ said Hopkins. ‘They killed her.’

‘I hear you, but you need to get your story straight now. Professional Standards can be arseholes but they hate child-killers as much as you do. You have to give them the right story for them to give you a pass. And you have to have your story straight from the start. Okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘Why were you holding the spade?’

‘I used it to break open the window in the kitchen. I’d heard the girl scream.’

‘Fisher will back you up on that?’

Hopkins sat back in his chair and nodded. ‘We both heard it.’

‘And why did you hit the woman? Think carefully, Dave.’

The inspector took a deep breath. ‘I came out of the kitchen and she was in the hallway. I identified myself as a police officer and asked her where Bella was. She came towards me in an aggressive manner and I used the spade to deflect her attack. I was then joined by PC Fisher who constrained her while I went upstairs.’

‘Excellent,’ said the superintendent, patting him on the shoulder. ‘What happened then!’

‘She’s breathing!’ The voice came from upstairs. ‘She’s okay!’ The two detectives both jumped as if they’d been stung. They looked at each other in astonishment.

Hopkins shot up out of his chair and beat the superintendent to the kitchen door. They hurtled down the hallway, shoving a white-overalled SOCO out of the way.

The younger of the paramedics was standing at the stop of the stairs, beaming from ear to ear. He flashed the detectives two thumbs up. ‘She’s okay!’ he shouted. ‘She’s bloody well okay!’

A Sky TV crew had arrived outside the house just as the paramedics were pushing Bella out on the trolley. They wanted to film her being taken to the ambulance, but by the time they had the camera out she was already inside. As the ambulance sped off, the reporter hurried over to Wilkinson with her crew in tow. Wilkinson knew her, she’d been covering the Bella Harper abduction from Day One. Her name was Carol Khan and she was one of the more professional reporters he’d dealt with, so he decided to give her a statement.

‘Superintendent Wilkinson, can you tell us what’s happened?’ she asked, holding the microphone under his chin. The lanky cameraman had the lens aimed at Wilkinson’s face and he automatically raised his chin, knowing from experience that with his head down he had several rolls of fat around his neck.

‘I can tell you that Bella Harper is alive and well and will shortly be reunited with her parents,’ he said. ‘Two people are in custody and that’s all I can say at the moment.’

‘Can you tell us if she has been sexually assaulted?’ asked the reporter.