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

then,’ Müller replied. ‘Do you have a father who is still alive?’

‘I do,’ Monroe answered. ‘Lives in Glasgow. We don’t see each other much, he’s in his eighties, doesn’t travel well. Phone calls every couple of weeks, Christmas cards and birthday wishes, nothing more really. Why?’

‘Imagine that one day, your father disappears. Not die, but simply vanish. And now it has been years. You learn that he may have taken a new identity, maybe even been murdered, and they give you names to investigate. Would you do it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Say your superiors tell you not to, that there is no case. Would you take matters into your own hands?’

‘Well, yes,’ Monroe replied. ‘But let me give you another hypothetical question. Your father disappears, and when you look into him, you learn he was a monster, a serial killer who would force people into killing themselves. Would you still investigate this?’

‘My father was not the Ampelmännchen Killer,’ Müller stated. ‘That is what we call him in Germany.’

‘Are you sure?’ Monroe insisted. ‘The world’s filled with sons and daughters who didn’t know the truth about their parents. Perhaps your sister disagrees with you on that?’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘You’re often seen arguing.’

Müller shrugged. ‘So we argue, that is not a crime. She and I, we learned when my mother died that we are not brother and sister, that our mother had an affair. She told us on her deathbed.’

‘That’s harsh.’

‘That was our mother, Detective Chief Inspector.’

‘So which of you’s the bastard?’ Monroe asked more jovially than the words suggested.

‘We never found out,’ Müller replied, staring down at a gravestone. ‘We chose to live with the ignorance. That way our father is still our father.’

‘Did your father know about this?’ Monroe leaned against a statue of an angel as he spoke the question. ‘I mean, if I found out my wife was having an affair, I’d be pretty pissed off.’

‘My father was a good detective,’ Müller replied. ‘I would assume he knew.’

Monroe thought about this for a moment. ‘Was Karl Meier the man she had the affair with?’

Rolfe Müller nodded. ‘I believe so.’

‘Jesus,’ Monroe exhaled. ‘That’s a bloody tangled web right now.’ He pulled out his phone as it beeped. Reading the message, he looked up.

‘I know you couldn’t give an answer to your whereabouts when Wing died, but what about an hour ago?’ he asked. ‘And, for that matter, your sister?’

‘I was in the church, praying,’ Müller calmly announced, as if this act would obviously make him seem more innocent. ‘And I am not my sister’s keeper.’

‘Shame,’ Monroe tutted. ‘We’ll need to find her. And you’ll need to sit down and have a proper chat with us.’

‘And why is that?’ Müller was rattled. He didn’t know what had been on the text message, and that he was in the dark here obviously affected him. Monroe placed his phone away.

‘Because someone just tried to hang Karl Schnitter,’ he said.

Declan had followed the ambulance into Maidenhead and St Mark’s Hospital, with Doctor Marcos staying behind at the scene of the crime. He knew she was still banned from active crime scenes as a forensic examiner, but technically she was a witness, and she could tell PC Davey where to look.

He’d paced around the waiting room for a good half hour before the nurse had appeared informing him that Karl Schnitter was now stable, had a bruised larynx but wanted to speak to him. Declan followed her into a ward where, in a quiet side room, Karl was lying in a bed.

‘He’s sedated,’ the nurse explained. ‘Not, like sedated sedated, but enough to take the edge off.’

‘Like he’s high?’

‘A little, yes,’ the nurse continued. ‘So he might be a little more relaxed than you’d expect from a man who recently cheated death.’

Entering the room, Declan saw Karl smiling at him from the bed.

‘My saviour,’ he croaked, the voice barely audible. There was nobody else in the room, but Declan moved to the side of the bed, pulling a chair behind him so that he could sit close to Karl.

‘Can you remember anything else now?’ He asked. Karl shook his head.

‘I did not see my killer,’ he whispered, and then giggled. ‘The attempted killer, anyway. For I am not dead.’

‘Karl, I need to ask a serious question, and I need a serious answer,’ Declan continued, already regretting not waiting until Karl was clearer headed. ‘In your garage, there was an iMac. My father’s iMac. What were you doing with it?’

Karl shook his head. ‘No, no, no,’ he whispered. ‘That was not the computer. That was the shell.’

‘Shell? You mean outer casing?’

Karl nodded, his eyes closing as he spoke. ‘Yes, casing. The hard drive, the computer itself was removed. I found it in a skip off the High Street.’

‘Why did you have it then?’

‘Because I wanted to find the hard drive,’ Karl whispered. ‘I thought the shell might help me find it. I guessed it was stolen by Rolfe.’

‘Rolfe Müller? Why him?’

‘Because he was hunting your father and I,’ Karl’s voice was softening, as if he was falling asleep. ‘He believed your father had information on the Reaper.’

‘And why would he think that?’

‘Because I told his sister that,’ Karl replied lazily. ‘When she visited me two months ago.’

Declan raised his eyebrows in surprise at that. Rolfe and Ilse Müller had only been in Hurley a couple of weeks. If Ilse had arrived months earlier than that…

She would have been here the same time that his father died.

‘Why did she visit you?’ Declan asked. ‘What did she want?’

But it was too late. The sedatives had performed their task, and Karl Schnitter was now snoring gently in the hospital bed. Declan leaned back, annoyed. If Karl had been telling the truth, then Rolfe and Ilse Müller could have been the ones that stole his father’s computer. But more importantly, why had Ilse Müller visited Karl months before this arrival?

Declan rose from the chair and left the ward. Karl wasn’t going anywhere, and he sure as hell wasn’t going