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

‘And?’

Marilyn sighed and shrugged. ‘We reviewed all the evidence and found the same. Suicide.’

‘Cut and dried.’

‘Cut and dried. There was no evidence to suggest murder – and I promise you, I did look for it.’

‘But Malcolm didn’t accept your findings either,’ Jessie murmured.

‘No. No, he didn’t.’ His voice slipped to a monotone. ‘He kept on and on and on . Wrote back to the same cast of politicians, wrote to all the papers, tried to whip up a media storm, but there was nothing there, no story, so none of them bit.’

‘Why was he so determined?’

‘I don’t know. I just remember how mad he was with grief. Grief and anger. I was surprised that he was so damn angry. Grief, I expected, sadness, loss, guilt even, but not anger.’

Jessie was looking at the floor, her arms folded across her chest, defensive body language, she recognized, but too tense to unwrap. ‘Anger is often the go-to emotion that masks others. Sadness, grief, loss – they can all morph into anger, particularly if they’re mixed with frustration or perceived helplessness. It’s hard for family members to accept … suicide.’ She swallowed, eased the word out around the wad that had formed in her throat. ‘Because where there’s suicide, there is a deep, debilitating hopelessness that the victim can’t see a way around. The family often blame themselves because they didn’t notice, or didn’t realize the depth of despair. Guilt, blame, self-recrimination, self-blame – they can eat you up. It’s always easier to look somewhere else to lay that blame.’ She glanced up, met Marilyn’s gaze for a fraction of a second, couldn’t hold it. ‘Children shouldn’t die before their parents,’ she murmured, tracing the meandering crack in the grey lino with the toe of her ballet pump. ‘It flips the law of nature on its head. A parent is programmed to protect their child at all costs, to do anything to keep that child safe, however old the child is.’

A child. A son. Committing suicide.

Jessie had held on to her own grief, dealing with the pain the only way a fourteen-year-old knew: internalizing it, taking the blame for her brother’s suicide squarely on her own shoulders. She had the psychological scars to prove it. Danny Lawson’s father sounded to have done the opposite and looked for someone else to blame. Anyone else to blame. Either way, she knew exactly what he had been going through.

She felt the weight of Marilyn’s hand on her arm. ‘We should go in now, Jessie.’

She nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

Slipping on his Oakley’s, Callan walked slowly, collecting his thoughts with each step following the line of Blackdown’s chain-link, razor-wire-topped boundary fence, towards the thick wooded area where he could see Lieutenant Ed Gold and the scenes of crime boys.

Although he was still two hundred metres away, Callan could see the arrogant rigidity of Gold’s stance, recognize the disproportionate command in the staccato arcs of his gestures, hear each word of his barked orders clear as a bell. Gold was in his element, enjoying the control, even though the scenes of crime technicians were consummate professionals who needed no guidance. Callan would take pleasure in rescuing them, bursting Gold’s bubble.

Callan glanced at his watch. It was a quarter past ten. He was late to the scene, very late. He had received the call notifying him of a suspicious death at Blackdown training base sixty minutes ago, while he’d been sitting in his neurologist’s office, digesting bad news. He only hoped that Gold hadn’t fucked up the crime scene already, though the presence of Sergeant Glyn Morgan, his lead SOCO, a forest ghoul moving silently through the trees in his white overalls, gave him a modicum of confidence that some integrity may have been preserved.

Gold glanced over, caught sight of Callan and the next order died on his lips.

‘What have we got, Gold?’ Callan asked as he reached him.

‘A dead soldier,’ Gold muttered, his navy-flecked, royal-blue gaze meeting Callan’s insouciantly. A beat later, he added a reluctant ‘sir’ and followed it with a disinclined salute.

Callan returned the salute smartly, though he was more tempted to use his right hand to smack Gold around the head. He knew that it would take all his willpower not to wring the jumped-up little shit’s neck on this case, suspected that Colonel Holden-Hough, Officer Commanding Southern Region, Special Investigation Branch, knew the same, which is why he had been given Gold as his detachment second-in-command in the first place.

‘Who?’ Callan snapped.

‘A trainee, Stephen Foster.’ Gold flipped open his notebook. ‘Aged sixteen.’

‘What was he doing out here?’

‘Guard duty.’

‘Alone?’

Gold shook his head. ‘With a female. Martha Wonsag.’

‘So where the hell was she when he died?’

Gold shrugged. ‘I haven’t got that far yet, sir.’

‘Where is the rest of the guard detachment?’

‘They’re back on normal duties.’ He held up the notebook. ‘I have their names.’

‘What?’ Callan stared at him, incredulous. ‘This is most likely a murder inquiry and the victim’s guard detachment will be top of our list of suspects. Secure a suite of rooms and get the guard rounded up and isolated now. Do not leave them alone for a second, and do not let them talk to each other. I’ll start interviews when I’ve looked at the crime scene.’

His jaw tight with anger, Gold nodded. ‘Right, sir.’

Turning away, feeling the heat of Gold’s fury burning into his back, biting down on his own anger – anger at himself for having been unavailable when the call about a suspicious death came through, at Gold for his incompetence, knowing that a significant part of his anger was fuelled by dislike – Callan climbed into a set of overalls and ducked under the crime scene cordon. Morgan’s SOCOs fell silent as he approached, and he knew what they were thinking. He was famous, or more accurately infamous, in the Special Investigation Branch. Only thirty, eight years in, and he had already taken two bullets whilst on duty. The first a gift from the Taliban eighteen months ago in Afghanistan, still lodged in his brain; the fallout, permanent seizures, manageable at the moment with drugs, his neurologist had told him this morning, but likely to worsen with time. The second, a bullet in the abdomen from a fellow soldier four months ago, in woods not unlike these. He’d only been back on duty for two weeks. He knew that he was well respected in the Branch for being brave and professional, and found it unnerving. How opinions would change if his colleagues found out about his epilepsy and the demons that infested his mind at night. What he was feeling now, walking into this dense, shadowy copse of trees. Déjà vu.

‘Sir.’ Morgan straightened as Callan reached him. At five foot eight the top of his head barely grazed Callan’s shoulder.

‘I’m glad you’re here, Morgan.’

‘I’m glad you’re here, too, Captain.’ A gentle Welsh valleys accent, unmellowed by his decades-long absence from the Rhondda. He was the son of a coal miner, had faced only three life choices: unemployment, life down a pit, or the Army. He had chosen the Army and escape and was a career soldier, experienced and capable, with a degree of cynicism gained over twenty-five years in the Redcaps, that meant he was no longer surprised by any crime that the dark side of human nature could conjure up. ‘My patience was wearing thin with Little Lord Fauntleroy over there.’

With his stocky frame, steel-grey hair and clipped moustache, he reminded Callan of a solid grey pit pony.

‘May I take the liberty of saying that you look like shit, sir,’ Morgan continued. ‘Big night?’