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

She felt as if she was butting her head up against a wall. A smooth, featureless, wall, plain white, no finger-holds, nothing to get a grip on. Her office felt oppressive suddenly, a room shut up for too long over winter, which it had been. The shower had passed, sunlight breaking through the bank of grey clouds outside. Standing, Jessie unlocked the window and hauled up the lower sash. Cool, damp air eddied through the gap.

‘Can I go now?’ Ryan asked, narrowing his gaze against the sunlight.

‘Not yet.’

‘Why not?’ he hissed.

The sudden flare of aggression surprised Jessie, gone almost as soon as she’d registered it. He had seemed too distant, too closed down for aggression. She made a mental note.

‘Don’t I get a choice?’ he finished.

‘Unfortunately you gave up your right to choose when you joined the Army.’

His mouth tightened as if she had unwittingly put her finger on a nerve.

‘Ryan, Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace, referred you to the Defence Psychology Service. As you can see, there’s not much information in your file.’ She held up the single page. ‘So why don’t you tell me why you think he sent you.’

Jaw muscles clenched under his skin.

‘I’ve never even talked to him.’ He stretched his arm straight above his head. ‘He’s God isn’t he? And I’m down here somewhere.’ The hand moved to graze the carpet. ‘Pond life.’

If he’d had no verbal contact with Wallace, had he talked to someone else about his feelings, or had his behaviour been noticed? ‘Did you talk to someone else at Blackdown about how you’re feeling?’

‘I’m not feeling anything.’

‘There must be a reason that you’re here, that you were referred.’

Ryan’s arms tightened around his torso, but he didn’t reply. Everything about his posture telegraphed intense feelings of discomfort at Jessie’s questions.

‘Who did you talk to, Ryan?’

‘No one.’ His gaze found the window. Jessie let him stare. After a moment, his gaze still fixed on the outside, he murmured, ‘He approached me.’

‘Who approached you?’

‘The chaplain.’

That wasn’t in the file. She made a mental note.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said that it’s his job.’

‘To keep an eye on new recruits?’

‘Yeah. Their spiritual health, mental health, all that crap.’

‘What did you talk to him about?’

Another shrug. ‘Stuff.’

‘Can you tell me?’

He shook his head. ‘They’re supposed to be confidential, aren’t they? My discussions with him? I should have known not to talk to him.’ Ryan slumped in the bucket chair, started kicking at the carpet with one of his combat boots, muttered under his breath. ‘Fuckin’ kiddie fiddler.’

Catholic. Kiddie fiddler. The chaplain must get that all the time – an occupational hazard. Jessie continued to look at Ryan, but he didn’t add anything else. She waited, the silence growing heavier.

‘Do you believe in God, Doctor Flynn?’ he asked suddenly.

Jessie took a beat before answering. She had been raised a Catholic, sent to a convent school, but she had never seen any evidence that the people around her lived by God’s word. Had seen no evidence at all of the existence of a just and gentle God. The only God she had experienced persecuted and destroyed.

And God will use this persecution to show his justice and to make you worthy of his kingdom, for which you are suffering.

Persecution without justice.

‘No, Ryan, I don’t believe in God.’

Ryan looked up and their gazes met for a fraction of a second before he looked away again. Minute progress, but progress all the same.

‘My mum spent time in a mental home, you know, when I was younger. Perhaps madness runs in the family.’

‘No one is saying that you’re mad.’

‘But it does run in families, doesn’t it?’ he murmured. ‘Madness?’

‘There is no such thing as madness,’ Jessie said quietly, her gaze finding the window. ‘There are disorders, some caused by physical factors, chemical imbalances in people’s brains, some caused by psychological factors, such as bad experiences in childhood.’ She fought to keep her voice even, feeling the tension rise, the electric suit tingle against her skin. Madness. ‘They can all be treated, but the patient needs to be willing.’

She thought that Ryan would have switched off, be picking at his beret or kicking at the carpet again, but when she looked back from the window, she saw that he was watching her intently.

‘Well, perhaps I am.’

‘Willing?’

‘Mad.’

‘Perhaps we all are.’ Jessie smiled, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. ‘We’re all individuals, Ryan. Don’t feel that you need to be the same as the others to fit in.’

A chill shook Jessie as she closed the door behind Ryan, and she realized that the window was still open. The cloud canopy was back, draping itself over Bradley Court, the leaves on the copper beeches outside lifting and twisting in the wind, rain speckling through the open window. Hauling down the sash, she stood looking out, awed by the ability of the weather to change so suddenly from darkness to light and back to darkness again.

What had she been doing when she was Ryan’s age? She would have been back at school then, trying to get a grip on normality, work for her GCSEs, make up for the time that she had missed, prove to herself – to them – that she could, would, carve a normal life for herself. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head and rested it against the cool glass. The hiss and snap of the electric suit was intensifying with the memories.

She could feel the box of matches in her shaking hand, the rough strip on the side as her fingers felt to slide it open in the dark. It was important that she was quiet, vital that she didn’t wake them. She just needed to show them. Show her.

Her eyes snapped open. The electric suit was tight around her throat.

She had been fourteen, younger even than Ryan. Old enough to face the consequences though. Old enough to pay.

Callan found Blackdown’s commanding officer, Colonel Philip Wallace, in his office. He was in his fifties, a large man, square and solid, both facially and in his build, running to fat around the middle, as were many men of his age, used to spending too much time behind a desk.

‘Come in, Captain Callan. You’re the Senior Investigating Officer on this case?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So where have we got to?’ A clipped, public school accent, the tone controlled but commanding.

‘It’s early days, sir. The autopsy is booked for tomorrow morning, so we should have confirmed cause of death by end of day tomorrow.’ Callan tried to catch his eye, to form the crucial first impression of the man who would, no doubt, be breathing down his neck until the investigation was concluded. But sunlight was cutting obliquely through the window to Wallace’s right, lighting his face, masking his eyes behind the reflection in his frameless square spectacle lenses. ‘But I suspect it’s murder.’