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

‘He’s carrying an umbrella,’ Marilyn said.

‘Which makes sense, considering it was pouring,’ Workman murmured.

Marilyn nodded, focusing on the screen. ‘Dark jumper, dark trousers, dark coat, sensible shoes.’

‘Sensible shoes?’

‘Pause, please.’

The grainy image froze. Marilyn pressed his finger to the screen.

‘Clodhoppers.’

The shoes were thick-soled, the type of shoes that would be sold at Clarks as ‘built for walking’.

‘Malcolm Lawson was certainly the sensible-shoe type,’ Workman said.

‘He was that.’

‘It could be him,’ she said.

‘It could be me.’

‘You don’t wear sensible shoes, sir,’ Workman said, glancing down at his £300 Edward Hill pebble-grain leather brogues.

Fair point.

Marilyn turned to the guard. ‘Play it until the man leaves the hospital, disappears from view, but the sliding doors are still open. Pause with the doors open, please.’

The guard’s eyebrows rose in query.

‘The background. He could have driven to the door.’

‘Not allowed.’

‘Midnight? In the rain? Who’s out there objecting?’

They waited while the man dressed in dark clothing parked the pram, stooping to take one last long look at baby Harry before he straightened, turned and exited the building, walking right, diagonally across the service road, out of shot.

‘Now,’ Marilyn said.

The screen froze, sliding doors still open, revealing the service road beyond, the darkness illuminated by the circular misty disc of an overhead streetlamp. Marilyn pressed his finger to the far left-hand side of the screen.

‘This? What’s this?’

‘The front of an ambulance,’ the guard said. ‘The bumper, a bit of the grille and bonnet.’

‘You sure?’

‘Absolutely. I’ve worked here for twenty years. Seen enough of those in my time to recognize one from a square inch.’

‘OK,’ Marilyn said. ‘Fine.’ He could tell that the security guard was a pedant. A twenty-years-in-the-job pedant; good enough for him. ‘So that’s an ambulance.’

His gaze tracked right, across the bottom of the screen, up an inch, left, the CCTV equivalent of a fingertip search in mud. Double yellow lines, showing muted white on the black-and-white screen. Something bright white, inflated – a plastic bag? At the top of the screen, two wheels, separated by a pale, blotchy – most probably, dirty white – stripe of metal, a horizontal row of alternate dark and light-coloured blocks above.

‘The lower half of a police car, sir,’ Workman cut in.

Marilyn tilted forward, squinting through his glasses, picking out every detail. The vehicle was parked on the other side of the service road, half its wheels, a segment of chassis, the stripes and the blocks – navy blue and fluorescent yellow in real life – showing gunmetal grey and luminous white on the screen.

‘Yes, you’re right. It’s a police car.’

He glanced over at the security guard, who concurred.

One ambulance, one police car: nothing unusual in either of those being parked on a hospital service road. Nothing else visible. No leads. No breaks. No bloody luck.

Tugging off his glasses, sliding them back into his pocket before Workman had time to comment on his new-found old man accoutrements, he leaned back in the chair and stretched his arms above his head. Focusing so hard on the screen had left his eyes feeling as if someone had tugged them five centimetres from his face on their optic nerves and then pinged them back into their sockets.

‘So it could very possibly have been Malcolm Lawson who dropped the baby off,’ he said.

Workman and the security guard both nodded.

‘He was tender with Harry,’ Workman said. ‘He stopped to take a last look. A long look.’

Marilyn sighed. ‘He did. He did indeed.’

His mood hadn’t improved. He felt as if he’d spent the whole morning running in circles, chasing his tail. He had snuck out of the hospital a couple of times to join the unwashed throng outside for a sneaky cigarette, hoping, ridiculously, that Janet, that dumpy receptionist, wouldn’t catch him in the act. Lord knows why her opinion mattered to him, but for some reason he felt strongly that he needed to prove her wrong. Prove to her that he could take control of his health, even if he was delaying the attempt until tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. Every traffic cop and patrol car in Surrey and Sussex had been told to keep an eye out as a priority, but as yet there had been no sighting of Malcolm Lawson’s car. DS Workman had already been telephoned three times by Granny Lawson for updates, even though she’d only left the hospital two hours ago, each call progressively more tearful. He hadn’t given the old biddy his mobile number, small mercies.

‘Get a copy of the original film to the tech boys, DS Workman, see if they can clean it up.’

‘That’ll take two or three days, sir.’

Pushing himself to his feet, he threw her a withering look. ‘Better get on with it then.’

She obviously hadn’t turned James Blunt up loud enough, because she heard her phone on the first ring, caught its jittering progress across the smooth black leather of her passenger seat out of the corner of her eye. Easing her foot on to the brake, pulling her Mini to the side of the lane until the dogwood hedge fingered her passenger window, Jessie reached over, checked the name flashing on the phone’s face.

Gideon Duursema.

She was tempted to toss it back on the seat, wind down the windows and turn up the volume, step on the accelerator, plead ignorance to her boss in the morning. But she couldn’t start off on the wrong foot with him so soon after her return. She was good at her job, intuitive and dedicated – most of the time – so he cut her slack, but even he had limits.

‘Gideon.’

‘Jessie.’

Silence, which she let hang.

‘How was DI Simmons?’

A diversionary tactic, from his tone.

‘Rough, as always.’

‘How was the baby?’

‘Small. Fat. Baby-like.’

His deep laugh echoed down the line. ‘So maternal.’

‘Well, at least you’re not going to have to worry about me getting knocked up and taking months off work.’

‘Small mercies, Doctor Flynn.’

Doctor Flynn. Ominous. Echoes of the occasions when her mother called for ‘Jessica’, as a child. Nothing good ever came out of those occasions.

‘You’re on your way home, I presume?’

‘Yes,’ she replied in a cautious voice.

‘Then, I’m sorry.’

‘You’re apologizing before you’ve even asked me to do anything. Now that really makes me nervous.’

‘You weren’t also feeling tired were you? Jet-lagged?’

Jessie glanced quickly at the washed-out oval segment of her face in the rear-view mirror. ‘Knackered. Why?’

‘I’ve had another request.’

‘Don’t tell me. From your dry cleaner. Your suit is ready for collection. Of course, yes, no problem, give me the address.’

Another laugh, this one a cynical bark, cut off before it was finished. ‘I was hoping that your stint on a boat might have made you more respectful of authority, but I seem to be sadly deluded.’

‘Type 45 Destroyer.’

She heard his exasperated sigh down the phone, remained stubbornly silent.

‘There’s been a suspicious death at Blackdown. Early this morning. A sixteen-year-old.’

‘Sounds like a PR disaster in the making.’

Headlights suddenly, even though it was still daylight, high up, lighting the interior of her Mini operating-theatre bright. She held her breath, hoping her Mini was doing the same, while a huge metallic black Range Rover Sport squeezed past on the narrow lane, the woman driving, a slim blonde, mobile clamped to her ear, the nose of a chubby-faced, blonde toddler pressed to the back window, her breath clouding the glass.