Death's Cold Hand by J.E. Mayhew (good romance books to read txt) 📕

“Yeah? Is this about Alfie? I’m his mum. What do you want?”

“I’d like to speak to him if I may. He’s not in any trouble. We just want to get a statement from him about an incident he might have witnessed.”

“Alfie’s not a grass, you know. That Bobby Price was looking for him. I told him fuck off. You should go and arrest him. He’s a fuckin’ psycho…” The baby gave a warning growl and began to squirm.

“I just need to speak to Alfie,” Kath said, holding up her hand. “Can I come in?”

Reluctantly, the woman stepped back and led Kath up a flight of stairs to the flat above and into a small living room. The place looked as though it had just been burgled. Clothes lay strewn all over the floor and furniture, along with packets of nappies and ashtrays. “I’d have tidied up if I’d known you were coming. ALFIE! GET HERE NOW.” A small chihuahua yapped at Kath, baring its needle teeth but the woman shoved it away with her foot. “ALFIE!”

A small red-headed boy, who didn’t look fourteen peered sullenly into the living room. “What?”

“Hi Alfie, I’m DI Kath Cryer. I need to ask you a few questions.”

For a second, Kath thought the lad was going to run for it but then his shoulders slumped and he dragged himself into the room, collapsing onto the split cover of the old leather sofa. “I didn’t hurt nobody. It wasn’t me…”

“We know that, Alfie. Bobby Price told us what he did and Mr Smith, the man who was hurt…”

“Well, what do you wanna know then?”

“The baseball bat, Alfie. Where did that come from?”

“Bobby said it was his. He said…” The boy paused and bit his lip.

“Go on. Look, Alfie, Bobby told us everything. There’s nothing new here, so you needn’t worry about ‘grassing’ anyone up, okay?”

“Really? What everything? Even about his sister and that Travis bloke?”

Chapter 24

Back at HQ, DS Vikki Chinn stared intently at a piece of paper sealed in an evidence bag. She looked troubled.

“You okay Vikki?” Blake said, perching on the edge of her desk.

“It’s this Richard Ince case, sir. It’s a bit ropey if you ask me.”

“Really? In what way?”

Vikki paused, choosing her words carefully. “Well, on the face of it, you could say it was an open and shut case. Ince took a heroin overdose after suffering from PTSD for so long. He even left a note.”

“But?”

“Ince was reportedly with a drinking buddy the night he died and yet that wasn’t explored. I managed to track the buddy down. He’s another ex-soldier who works at Pro-Vets, Terry White…”

“Yeah, I met him the other day. Bit of an unusual drinking partner. Can’t imagine he’d be the kind to take your mind off things. How come the original investigation team didn’t pick up on that?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Vikki said. “Also, Terry White insists that Ince never took heroin and that he seemed really happy on the night he died. The trouble is, White wrapped it up in his own paranoid fantasy, so I imagine the original team would have disregarded it.”

“An unreliable witness, then?”

“White believes that the ghost of an old corporal of his is able to take on the identities of other people and is stalking him, killing his friends.”

“Do you think there’s a nugget of truth in there somewhere? I mean someone stalking White and his friends?”

“I don’t know, sir, but I decided to approach the manager at the Asda store where Ince worked up to the time of his death. He provided me with Ince’s personnel file. It had his letter of application in it. Look…” Vikki placed the letter of application alongside the suicide note.

“Jeez, you don’t have to be a handwriting analyst to see that they are written by two different people,” Blake muttered.

“Even if we accept that he was stressed and suicidal, that wouldn’t account for the difference in the script, sir.”

“Who was the original Senior Investigating Officer?”

“DCI Cavanagh, sir,” Vikki said, her expression saying everything that she couldn’t say out loud.

Blake chewed his lip for a second. “Have another word with Jack Kenning and see if he thinks a second post-mortem would be appropriate. I’ll have a word with Matty Cavanagh.”

“There was something else, sir,” Vikki said. “I feel a bit daft mentioning it, really but Nicola Norton told me that White went through a phase of burning little effigies of people who he thought were out to get him.” She paused, reddening. “It just reminded me of the toy soldiers, sir, that’s all.”

“Why did White burn them?”

“I don’t know. He described it as voodoo. Apparently, he believed it trapped part of Corporal Graves’ soul. Maybe when he burns them, he destroys that little bit of Graves. I don’t know. It all sounds ridiculous, sir, I know but…”

“White was the last person to see Richard Ince alive,” Blake said, finishing her thought for her. “And if he could kill Ince, maybe he’d be capable of killing Travis.”

“He mentioned Travis as one of the people whose identity Graves had taken over.”

“But the toy soldiers found in the men’s hands weren’t burnt, were they?”

“No, sir. It could be that it’s nothing and I’m getting carried away. The counter argument to all this is that White has an acquired brain injury. He struggles to make links with anything. I find it hard to imagine him planning a murder.”

“And yet Ince’s suicide note looks to have been forged,” Blake said. “Keep it quiet for now, Vikki but ask a few discreet questions around Pro-Vets. See if you can build up more of a picture of Terry White. Is his counsellor helpful?”

“She’s disclosed quite a lot, sir but she’s rightly worried about confidentiality. I can try and push her on giving us more information, sir, if you want me to.”

“See what you can do, Vikki,” Blake said, looking down at the file on Ince. “If push comes to shove, we’ll get a warrant. Meanwhile, I’ll go and have