Whisper For The Reaper by Jack Gatland (best book series to read TXT) 📕

Randall hadn’t told the police everything,’ Anjli started. ‘By that I mean she had tried to tell them something she’d seen, but it didn’t fit their narrative, so they ignored it. Apparently, when she was playing with some friends, she saw Craig in the woods with a man. Just sitting there, as if talking. She didn’t pay it any notice until later.’

‘Did she describe him?’

‘Caucasian, brown haired,’ De’Geer added. ‘But it was at a distance and she was distracted.’

‘There was one thing she was sure of,’ Anjli continued. ‘The man was flipping a coin.’

Declan looked up at this. ‘You sure?’ he asked. Anjli nodded.

‘Why?’

‘Something that Karl Schnitter had said to me,’ Declan replied. ‘When he was in the Grenztruppen, Müller would tempt dissidents to run, so that when they tried it, they’d be shot. But he would flip an East German Mark to give them a sporting chance.’ He considered this for a moment. ‘Karl reckoned that the coin was faked, so that the ‘heads’ was on both sides. Bastards never had a chance.’

‘So what, Müller’s returned, and he’s doing it again?’ De’Geer asked. ‘Tosses a coin, convinces the victim that they’re getting a fighting chance? That’s shitty.’ He paled. ‘Pardon my language.’

‘No, you’re right,’ Davey replied. ‘It’s shitty.’

‘Jess? What did you find?’ Declan asked. Jess pulled out a small notebook. It wasn’t police issue, but it was as near as you could get. Declan felt a little swell of pride. She was really taking this on board.

‘So Nathanial Wing owed everyone money,’ she started. ‘Family was well off but Chinese and owing money was a no no. One of the kids I spoke to said he’d lost it all on crypto but was trying to build it back up.’

‘Like Bernard Lau?’ Declan asked. He knew Jess understood crypto, because she’d assisted him in understanding it when Bernard Lau had died in Mile End, before he’d even joined Monroe’s team a few months back.

‘Yeah but I got the impression that Wing was more like a gambler betting on horses because he liked the name,’ Jess replied. ‘He owed everyone, it seemed, in particular someone they thought was a loan shark with a German accent. One of his friends heard him on the phone to him, and said that the guy basically told Wing that if he didn’t fulfil his end of the bargain, the debt would pass to his parents.’

Declan looked to Doctor Marcos at this.

‘Do you have the paper?’ he asked. Doctor Marcos nodded, pulling out the plastic bag holding the Temple Golf Club scorecard.

‘Did Wing have a pen when they found him?’ she asked Davey, who nodded.

‘Blue pilot G2,’ she replied. Doctor Marcos examined the words on the back for a moment.

‘’Yeah, that could be this. Definitely blue,’ she said. ‘We found this in the hole where Nathanial Wing died. We think he entered the club through the main entrance while our killer slipped over a fence down the road and away from CCTV. Because of this, Nathan had a moment or two to himself, and wrote a note on a discarded scorecard, folding it and holding it in his hand. When he died, it fell into the hole on the sixteenth green where it stuck to the side of the plastic hole tube, and was missed because of the amount of blood. Only reason I saw it was because there’d been rain the previous day.’

She showed it to the group.

IF I DON’T DO THIS THE GERMAN WILL KILL MY PARENTS.

‘So, we have a German owed by Nathan, although we don’t know if it’s money or not yet,’ Declan mused. ‘We also have a German Hauptmann who was believed to be the earlier Red Reaper, who used to flip a coin to decide someone’s fate, and a Caucasian male who was seen flipping a coin with Craig Randall.’

‘Then we have two suspects,’ Monroe spoke up. ‘The first is Wilhelm Müller.’

‘Who’s dead,’ Declan replied.

‘That we know of, and based on something your father told someone else,’ Anjli nodded. ‘What if he wasn’t killed, but was warned off? Then came back, killed Patrick Walsh and then realised he enjoyed doing this?’

‘Until we find a body somewhere with his DNA, then we need to class him as a suspect,’ Davey added. Declan nodded.

‘Then we have suspect two, Karl Schnitter,’ he continued. ‘I know he’s an old family friend, but Wintergreen suspected him, and he was around Müller at the start.’

‘He also claims that Müller performed the original murders to get at him though,’ Billy said, looking up from the laptop. Declan nodded.

‘True, he’s claiming the victim here, and he probably is. But I’ll only be happy with that once we discredit that theory. He was the mechanic who worked on my dad’s brakes, he would have easily been able to visit my mum before she died, and he knew both the Randalls and Dotty Brunel. We have to hold him as a potential.’

‘There’s a third,’ Billy said, leaning back. ‘Rolfe Müller.’

‘You’ve got something?’ Monroe asked. Billy shrugged.

‘Maybe,’ he replied. ‘I played it dumb throughout the lunch, and Ilse was more than happy to talk. I think she needed more of a soundboard, a therapist than someone to gain information from.’ He picked up his notebook, where he’d scrawled some notes. ‘Not that easy to write notes while there, but I put down the salient facts of the matter.’ He smiled. ‘You were all too busy working out your lunch orders.’

‘Says the guy who had his lunch paid for,’ muttered Anjli. Billy grinned.

‘So, Ilse told me that Rolfe is her older brother, he’s thirty-seven, she’s thirty-four. They were both born before the fall of the wall, in East Berlin. Their father was a border guard Captain, but they didn’t say where.’

‘Captain is the same as Hauptmann,’ Monroe added in. ‘Could be the same Müller. We need to check into that.’

’Yeah, I think so too,’ Billy continued. ‘I got the impression that Ilse and daddy weren’t close, but Rolfe was as a toddler.