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

didn’t say why, but it gives us two possible leads. First, that Karl might be Ilse’s dad, and we need to know how that works into things. But it means that she was around Hurley the night my father died.’

‘Ilse worked for a pharmaceutical company before she joined Rolfe,’ Doctor Marcos was writing on a sheet of paper as she spoke, working through a list of compounds. ‘She would have been working for them two months ago. We don’t know why she was fired, but it could be because of stolen supplies.’

‘Like what?’

‘Potassium chloride is a possible,’ PC Davey suggested. ‘It causes heart attacks.’

‘That’s on my list too, but you’d need about half a kilo,’ Doctor Marcos agreed. ‘There are ways to concentrate it though, and if she met with Patrick at the Dew Drop Inn, she could have spiked his drink. Add the rain, the roads…’

‘But surely the Red Reaper is a man?’ Jess asked now. ‘The witnesses—‘

‘Are all before Wilhelm’s possible death,’ Declan replied. ‘You said they heard a German speaking to Nathanial Wing, and we assumed it was the same person, but that could have been a call related to Rolfe’s hiring of him to hack the hard drive. There're no witnesses for any of the murders after your grandmother.’

‘Also,’ Anjli mused, ‘there’s no reason the killer couldn’t be a woman. Ilse’s not exactly a wilting flower, and the deaths have been psychological. No struggle, no fight, and Wing killed himself.’

‘And they struck Schnitter from behind,’ Monroe sat back in his chair. ‘Unconscious, it’s very easy for a victim to be dragged to a ramp, have the ratchet wrapped around his neck and then a button pressed. Could easily have been a woman.’

Declan took the pen and wrote ILSE under the other two names.

‘We need to find out what Ilse’s game is here,’ he ordered. ‘She told Wing to delay telling her brother about this hard drive. Why? She visited Karl a couple of months ago, without Rolfe knowing. Why?’

‘Reconnect with her real dad?’ Billy offered.

‘Then why try to kill him?’ Anjli countered. Billy smiled.

‘Looking at my family, I can totally feel her vibe there,’ he said.

‘Tonight we’ll consider this.’ Declan finished. ‘Go home, or to your rooms, whatever. Take a break, we’ve done some outstanding work here today. Tomorrow DCI Monroe goes to Berlin—’ he looked to Monroe as he continued ‘—and I think we need to know why Ilse was fired, whether Rolfe is AWOL from the force, and whether we can find out anything about an extra murder before the wall fell.’

‘Another murder?’ PC Davey asked.

‘We’re still missing a murder, I’m sure about it,’ Declan explained. ‘Nathanial Wing wasn’t placed on the sixteenth green for convenience, as he could have walked to any of them without a problem. Sixteen is a message, and we just have to decipher it.’

‘I’ll work with Joanna to see if we can deduce which of the kiddies is the bastard,’ Doctor Marcos said. ‘We can’t use DNA of Wilhelm, but we now have a lot of Karl’s. If both don’t match, we’ll know that’s a dead end.’

‘Good plan,’ Declan nodded. ‘Let’s get as much as we can before we start the next wave of enquiries. Until then, stand down.’

‘You heard the man,’ Monroe rose from his chair. ‘Let’s go grab a drink. I have a flight tomorrow and there’s no way I’m flying completely sober.’

17

Dark Before Dawn

It was late by the time Declan and Jess returned to the house. They’d stayed at the pub for dinner, but it had been a long day and so they’d left the others and walked back through Hurley. It was a quiet, cool night, but the sky was clear and the wind was light as they walked down the half-lit streets.

‘Dad,’ Jess asked after a few minutes of silence. ‘How do you do it?’

‘Do what?’ Declan asked, looking at her.

‘Compartmentalise this,’ Jess answered. ‘I mean, I’ve seen crime photos. I’ve watched films with gory scenes—‘

‘And how have you done that, considering you’re not eighteen?’

‘Look, I’m being serious. I’ve seen terrible things out there, but this afternoon I had a tightness in my chest, like I was having a panic attack.’ Jess looked at Declan, and he could see the trouble etched deep into her face. ‘I had to get some air outside. When I calmed down, I realised it was connected to the case. To Nate.’

‘That’s why you’re feeling this,’ Declan said as he opened the door to the house, allowing Jess to enter first. ‘He’s not Nathanial Wing to you anymore. He’s ‘Nate’. The friends that you spoke to humanised him, gave him a personality, a past. He’s not just a statistic now.’

He walked into the kitchen, flicking the kettle on as Jess followed.

‘Yeah, but you do the same,’ she said. ‘You speak to the parents, you gain an idea about how the victim lived, you enter their head when working out what happened. I mean God, dad, look at Kendis Taylor. She was your first love!’

Declan paused as he placed tea bags into mugs. One normal bag for him, one herbal for Jess.

‘Yeah, Kendis and I were close,’ he replied, not looking at Jess as he spoke, forcing his emotions back down. ‘And that was hard. I was ill, violently ill when I saw her body. I had an anger; when I knew that Malcolm Gladwell was her killer, it took every piece of self restraint that I could muster to stop myself killing him.’

‘What happens when we solve this case?’ Jess asked, walking to the counter and taking over tea making duties. ‘Because you’re going to be facing the man or woman who killed your parents. My grandparents.’

‘What would you do?’ Declan turned the question onto Jess now. ‘What would you want me to do to them?’

Jess sat silent for a moment as she thought about the question.

‘I’d want you to flip the coin,’ she whispered. Declan nodded at this.

‘And that’s the problem,’ he replied.