Kate Medina - Scared to Death - A gripping crime thriller you won’t be able to put down

‘The straw that broke the camel’s back.’

Marilyn smiled, a half-hearted attempt to lighten the moment. ‘Is that a technical term?’

Jessie returned his smile with one equally lacklustre. ‘You have to get all the way to PhD level before you can use it.’

‘So what was the straw?’

‘It could be any of a number of things. A significant date, the time of year, the weather. Despite what most people think, suicide rates peak in the spring and early summer – April, May, June.’

‘I would have thought winter. Winter is depressing.’

‘Yes, but everybody is depressed in winter. In spring, most people’s mood lifts. Warmer weather, flowers and trees coming into bloom, baby animals being born, new life – it makes everyone happier. Those people who are clinically depressed suddenly realize that they’re more alone, more isolated than they had thought. I know this isn’t helpful, but it could be one of a thousand things. He could simply have had enough. Reached the end, the point that he couldn’t go on fighting any more.’

They made it to the exit, stepped outside. Weaving through the crowd of smokers they surfaced into clear air and turned to face each other.

‘I appreciate you coming here today, Jessie.’

‘Find him, Marilyn. Find him quickly.’

Jessie was halfway to the car park when an April downpour came from nowhere and turned the tarmac into a boiling slick of bubbles within seconds. Breaking into a run, she reached her Mini, yanked open the driver’s door and dived inside, already soaked. Starting the engine, she flipped the wipers to maximum, heard them groan against the weight of water, clearing visibility, losing it. Scrubbing the condensation from the inside of the windscreen with the sleeve of her shirt, she eased the Mini back off the grass verge and crawled at snail’s pace to the exit. As she pulled out of the hospital car park on to the main road, the rain still sheeting, she saw Joan Lawson with Harry in his pushchair, waiting at the bus stop. There was no shelter and the old lady had obviously come out without an umbrella because she was standing, looking fixedly down the road in the direction of the oncoming traffic, rain flattening her silver hair to her head and pasting her white shirt to her body.

Passing the bus stop, Jessie flicked on her indicator and bumped two tyres on to the kerb. She couldn’t leave them standing there, getting drenched.

But what else could she do? She didn’t have a child seat and there was no way the pram would fit in her Mini. She didn’t even have an umbrella, a coat, anything to offer. Cursing her uselessness, she waited for a space in the traffic and eased back into its flow, watched them recede in the oval of her rear-view mirror, blurring under the downpour until they were toy people, the old lady still staring down the road, the bus nowhere in sight.

‘Captain Callan?’

The man who had manoeuvred himself in front of Callan in the doorway, who was now holding out his hand and fixing Callan with a limpid green gaze, was as Irish as Guinness and leprechauns. He was around Callan’s own age, but there the similarity stopped. Fine ginger hair feathered his head, freckles peppered his pallid face and the skin on his bare, extended forearm looked as if it would burn to a crisp in mid-winter. His body was soft and paunchy, his features slightly feminine looking. But the expression on his face was steadfast. Callan’s gaze found the purple pentagon bordering the black crown on his epaulettes, the purple band around the cap that he was holding in his left hand, and his heart sank. He took hold of the proffered hand firmly.

‘Chaplain. What can I do for you?’

‘I’m Michael O’Shaughnessy, the padre here at Blackdown. Could I have a quiet word please, Captain.’ He glanced past Callan to where a group of shock-faced sixteen-year-olds, last night’s guard detachment, fidgeted on chairs in the larger of the two rooms that Gold had secured for interviews. ‘In private.’

The only Army officers who didn’t carry standard ranks, chaplains could hail from any Christian religion or Judaism, but were expected to provide pastoral care to any soldier who needed it, irrespective of the soldier’s faith – or lack of it. All very worthy, but O’Shaughnessy’s presence in this room with Callan’s witnesses, his suspects, made him deeply uneasy. The last thing he needed was God or his earthly representative getting in the way of his investigation.

They stepped outside and Callan turned to face O’Shaughnessy. Though shards of sunlight were knifing through the grey clouds, it had started to rain, a soft patter on the tarmac around them. The chaplain gazed blandly up at Callan.

‘You’re leading the investigation into this poor, unfortunate boy’s death, I presume?’ His tone was soft, the lilt southern Irish, nothing hurried about his diction, no urgency.

Callan nodded, feeling impatience rear its head already. He resisted the urge to glance at this watch.

‘I would ask you to suspend your interviews for a few hours, send the boys and girls back to their accommodation blocks for a bit of downtime. You can resume later today, when they’ve rested. Perhaps even tomorrow morning.’

Callan frowned. ‘These “boys and girls”, as you call them, are witness to and potentially suspects in a suspicious death.’

‘Is it definitely murder?’

‘I won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but it looks that way.’ His tone was curt, deliberately so. He still felt like shit, didn’t have the mental or physical energy to exchange niceties with the chaplain. He wanted this conversation over, wanted to get back to doing his job.

‘This is a training base, Captain, for the Royal Logistic Corps, as you know. These are kids, sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds, for the most part. They are all tired and scared. You will get far more sense from them if you give them a chance to sleep, to get some rest.’

‘This is an Army base, Chaplain. These kids joined voluntarily and were legally old enough to make that decision.’

A shadow crossed O’Shaughnessy’s face. ‘They’re hardly Parachute Regiment or SAS, though, are they?’

‘They’re still Army, none of them conscripts.’ Still witnesses. Still suspects.

The rain was getting heavier; Callan could feel cold water funnelling down the back of his neck. He flipped up his collar and hunched his shoulders in his navy suit. O’Shaughnessy appeared not to notice the burgeoning downpour. Coming from Ireland, he was no doubt used to it. ‘Nobody is going anywhere, until I, or one of my team has spoken with them. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’ Callan turned to go inside.

‘Captain.’

Callan paused, his hand on the door, but didn’t turn. ‘Chaplain.’

‘I will be around, Captain Callan. The welfare of the living in this case is as important – more so, I would venture – than the welfare of the dead.’

Don’t tell me. Your God will look after the dead.

‘And it is my job to ensure that these teenagers’ welfare is not compromised.’

Callan’s hard gaze met the chaplain’s insipid green one.

‘Of course, Chaplain, I would expect nothing less. Just as it’s my job to find out what happened.’ He paused. ‘Did you know him, Chaplain?’

‘The victim?’

‘Stephen Foster. He was called Stephen Foster.’

‘My conversations are entirely confidential, Captain, you know that.’ His soft voice didn’t rise. ‘I cannot divulge the names of those that I give counsel to. I need to be indisputably trustworthy, above reproach. No names, no comebacks, as they say.’