A Little Death Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by A. J. Cross

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Acknowledgements

  Recent Titles by A. J. Cross

  The Dr Kate Hanson Mysteries

  GONE IN SECONDS

  ART OF DECEPTION

  A LITTLE DEATH *

  * available from Severn House

  A LITTLE DEATH

  A.J. Cross

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  This eBook edition first published in 2017 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  Copyright © 2017 by A. J. Cross.

  The right of A. J. Cross to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8700-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-777-7 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-845-2 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ONE

  The insistent buzz dragged Dr Kate Hanson’s head from her pillow, the rest of her body still in the grip of sleep. Scrabbling for the phone edging its way across the bedside table, she pulled herself upright, squinting at the time then at her caller’s ID: Detective Sergeant Bernard Watts, one of her colleagues in the Unsolved Crime Unit. 1.23 a.m. Whatever he had to tell her was not good news.

  ‘That you, doc?’

  She pushed her dark auburn hair from her face, glad her thirteen-year-old daughter wasn’t here. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘A tragedy, I’d call it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Go back twelve months to the disappearance of child-hero-turned-student …’

  ‘Elizabeth Williams,’ said Hanson, throwing back the duvet.

  ‘Got it in one. We think we’ve found her. Chong’s being tight-lipped as usual but the age estimate and measurements fit.’

  His reference to Rose Road headquarters’ pathologist Connie Chong told Hanson that somewhere in the slumbering city the examination of a body had begun.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Just three-quarters of a mile from Williams’s college in Genners Lane. There’s some undeveloped land off a lane there with all that’s left of a cricket ground and an old pavilion from years back. She’s in the field next to it.’

  Hanson was out of bed, pulling on the jeans she’d worn the day before. She lowered her head to speak into the phone. ‘Give me the postcode.’

  ‘No need. Look out your window.’

  Pulling back the curtains she gazed out at the slumbering avenue, its houses dark and self-contained behind their low garden walls in the early June, night-time chill. The glossy Range Rover was on her drive, its rich bronze subdued in the meagre light of a newish moon.

  ‘Shall I request a female constable for the brainbox?’ he asked – referring to Hanson’s thirteen-year-old.

  ‘Maisie’s at Kevin’s. Give me two minutes.’

  Hanson was in the Range Rover’s warmth, its engine running.

  ‘What else do you know?’ she asked.

  She waited as Watts reversed, then accelerated away from the house. Fifty-plus and looking every year of it in the dashboard’s reflected light, gruff to the point of rudeness, she anticipated that any information he had was pivotal. He’d already visited the site.

  ‘A bunch of local kids playing rounders in the field found the body at around eight o’clock.’

  Aghast, she studied him, images of bone-breaks and raw, torn flesh crowding her head. ‘Tell me they didn’t come across it lying there.’

  On a series of indicator clicks he turned on to the main road. ‘Trust you to knit up a horror scenario. She’s been missing twelve months and buried for God knows how long.’ He glanced at her. ‘One of the kids tripped, looked to see why and wished she hadn’t.’

  ‘What was it?’ she asked, reaching up to wind her thick dark red hair into a restraining band.

  ‘Shredded tarpaulin and the remains of fingers.’

  She looked away from him. ‘Sounds like a “horror scenario” to me.’

  After several minutes of silence the massive, modern buildings of the college campus appeared on their right, mostly in darkness except for lights along its pathways. Passing it they turned left off Genners Lane into darkness, the road narrow, their headlights sweeping over compact hedges and the press of trees on both sides. A pleasant enough setting, thought Hanson, depending on the time you came here and your purpose.

  Watts slowed and pulled in behind several police vehicles and Chong’s black estate car with its dark-tinted windows.

  Hanson looked from the black estate to the field beyond the hedge. Away to the left a large white forensic tent was a concentrated light source. Getting out of the Range Rover she picked up voices rolling towards them on the still air. She scanned the area to either side, getting her first sighting of the old cricket pavilion. Watts arrived at her side.

  ‘What time did you first get here?’ she asked.

  ‘Around nine. Whittaker and Jones were the first response at eight thirty. They called it in and preserved the scene.’ He nodded to the fresh-faced officer standing at a narrow gap in the hedge marked by crime scene tape.

  ‘Whittaker’s on guard so getting in will be like negotiating access to Fort Knox.
’

  She gave Watts a reproving glance. ‘You should encourage the young.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ He said, his two-decade or so start on her reflected in his voice. ‘I’ve put a rush on the DNA but we’re confident it’s Elizabeth Williams.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The measurements from Chong fit, plus a scarf and a ring believed to belong to Williams.’

  More muted voices reached them on a sudden breeze cool enough to be coming straight off the nearby reservoir. Hanson zipped her jacket and they headed for Whittaker who lifted the blue-and-white tape for them.

  ‘Back again, sarge? Names and details, please.’ He waited, pen poised over a pad turned silvery by moonlight.

  Watts’ eyes rolled. ‘Detective Sergeant Bernard Watts, Unsolved Crime Unit, police headquarters. Dr Kate Hanson, Forensic Psychologist, UCU and University of Birmingham.’

  They waited, Hanson’s attention fixed on the field ahead, pulse rate climbing. Watts shifted on his large feet as Whittaker wrote neatly, peered at his watch and added the time.

  ‘Good work, son,’ she heard Watts say.

  ‘Welcome, sarge. Here. Take these.’

  They took face masks and protective coveralls, silently shrugging their way into them as Whittaker watched.

  ‘You’ll be glad of the mask Dr Hanson, take my word for it.’

  She gave an absent nod, her attention still on the field which had held on to Elizabeth Williams in death for a year and was now giving up its secret.

  Coveralls swishing, they passed the pavilion, long and low, ravaged by time and wilful destruction, tiles ripped from its roof, the remains of its veranda fence snapped at angles like dirty broken bones, blue and black graffiti scarring its wooden walls and ‘Keep Out!’ notices, its windows boarded and sightless, the wide door angled like a loose tooth.

  Watts jabbed a thumb. ‘See that? A well-known meeting point for local types who’ll need checking out.’

  Types. Hanson recognised his word for the delinquent and the deviant which policing brought to him. He wasn’t finished.

  ‘Years ago when I’d just started on the job and this was a cricket pitch, I played here and that pavilion was full of sandwiches and tea.’ He sniffed. ‘Like everything, it’s gone to the dogs.’

  ‘The new college we just past cost millions to build.’

  He gave her a sideways glance. ‘You’ve only lived in Birmingham five minutes—’

  ‘Fourteen-plus years actually.’

  ‘And that kind of place is your terra firma, not mine. I don’t connect to it.’ He frowned at the pavilion as they passed beyond it. ‘I don’t connect here any longer.’

  Recognising the morose tone, she said nothing. They walked on in silence, a whooshing sound sending Hanson’s tension spiralling as a sudden white light bathed the field in a shimmering glow as the white clad SOCOs formed a line to move over the bright grass in search of evidence. Reaching the forensic tent Hanson got that feeling of being inside a bubble. She recognised it: a self-protective device for whatever she was about to see.

  Another officer appeared, clipboard in hand. She gave her name despite the fact that he saw her almost every time she went to police headquarters. By-the-book police work. Security of the crime scene.

  Standing in the diffuse light from the tent, Hanson picked up a familiar voice punctuated by clicks. Chong was recording her findings. Bright light hit their faces as the officer guarding the mouth of the tent held back the flap for them to enter, his eyes resolutely fixed on the horizon. Chong’s voice drifted out to them.

  ‘… found buried in a shallow grave.’ Hanson absorbed the few words. Aren’t they always? Easier for the killer. Digging deep took time. Even in early June last year when Elizabeth Williams disappeared.

  The stench hit Hanson, stopping her thinking and her breath. It slid around her mask, so dense, so pungent she could almost taste it. Her stomach rippled. In her haste to leave her house she’d forgotten the mentholated cream. She glanced at Chong’s face through the Perspex face shield. There was no cream on her upper lip. Chong was toughing it out. Hanson watched and listened as she spoke into the handheld recorder.

  ‘Zero evidence of clothing, save for the scarf looped loosely around the area of the neck, fitting description of victim’s own. Ring, possibly gold, found in the vicinity of one of the hands, fitting description of one belonging to victim at the time she disappeared. Remains wrapped in large grey-green tarpaulin which has sustained significant damage from animal predation whilst buried. No labels or other identification on tarpaulin visible at this time.’

  Watts stood, his eyes on the pathologist, his bulldog face impassive, arms hanging at his sides. Hanson forced her focus from the diminutive pathologist to the oozing green-black remains lying on the open tarpaulin in the makeshift grave. They were a sludgy, discoloured hammer blow to the senses. Face flushed, Chong looked up at them, then directly at Watts as he opened his mouth. She clicked off the recorder and pushed up the face shield, fixing him with a look.

  ‘Do not ask. The answer’s the same as when you last asked me. I can’t give you a cause of death. Hi, Hanson.’

  ‘No inkling at all?’ he pressed

  She looked exasperated. ‘How long have we worked together? You should know by now. I don’t do “inklings”. I can offer you a “probably”. Judging by what I’m seeing so far, she was probably buried here close to the time she disappeared.’

  He kept his eyes on her face, his own showing none of its usual ruddiness.

  She gestured at the remains. ‘Just one look should tell you why it’s still a “no” on cause of death.’ He kept his eyes averted.

  ‘I’ve told the lab to get a move on,’ he said. ‘Forensics will ring the DNA result direct to you.’

  He left the tent and Hanson knelt at the grave-edge, pressing her mask against her face. A futile gesture but it felt like she was doing something to halt the foulness seeping around it. When people she met socially asked about her work as a forensic psychologist she invariably kept her responses to a minimum yet even those were often enough to turn initial thrill to grimaced distaste. Her eyes travelled over the remains. The reality of her work was light years from most people’s experience. Right now she was looking at yet another reality she could never, would never, divulge.

  The general shape of the remains was discernible. They looked tall. Long limbed. She watched Chong move around them, peering and recording. They were much alike; she and Chong in the way they dealt with what their work brought them: collect the data, analyse and hypothesize. Keep it theoretical. Keep it distant.

  Watts was back, displacing odour-heavy air, causing a rush of saliva to Hanson’s mouth. Swallowing, she took the photographs he was handing her. She knew which ones they were. For most people in this city, possibly the country, these images had become iconic during the previous year following their inclusion in media reports of Elizabeth Williams’ disappearance.

  The one uppermost showed Elizabeth as a competitor in the Great Birmingham Run, dressed in shorts and sleeveless top bearing the city’s red-and-blue logo, her tanned face smiling broadly as she ran towards the camera, dark hair drawn back in a ponytail, frozen in its sideways flip. Hanson lingered on the details. A delaying tactic. Monitoring her breathing, she drew the second photograph from beneath it.

  Elizabeth Williams at age twelve, a year younger than Hanson’s daughter, her large, clear eyes gazing upwards as a city dignitary raised his arms above her head, his hands holding the red-blue striped ribbon with its small, round medal as he conferred on her the title ‘Birmingham Child Hero’.

  Hanson lowered the photographs, forehead slick, heart pounding. She looked again at scraped-away earth, discolouration and putrescence, senses sharpened, an odour like no other filling her nose, her mouth. Anger engulfed her. Whoever did this, how dare they? How dare they reduce a vital young woman, anyone to this?

  She wondered if the perpetrator had known that Elizabeth Wil
liams was her disabled mother’s carer from when she was only nine years old. That despite those responsibilities, she had excelled at school and secured a place at the nearby college to do a sports science degree? Had her killer known any of it? Hanson knew why killers did what they did. It was her job to know. It didn’t make the selfish destruction of the act any easier to bear.

  A distant memory thrashed and surfaced inside her head, triggering years-old fear and confusion. Instinctively she dragged foul air into her chest.

  Chong looked up, giving a sympathetic nod. ‘I know. This is about as bad as it gets.’

  Chong hadn’t understood. There was no reason why she should. The ghastliness in front of them, the photograph of twelve-year-old Elizabeth Williams had stirred a personal memory for Hanson, one known to only one other person, with the exception of the man himself: Hanson aged six, playing with her friend Celia inside a park, surrounded by the fresh scent of roses and the bogus safety of glossy black railings. The man had beckoned. Hanson had gone to him, felt his grab at her hair. The oozing stickiness of his hand had caused it to slip from his grasp. She closed her eyes. At six years old she had lost a vestige of innocence, but she’d been lucky. Elizabeth Williams had had her whole life stolen from her.

  Eyes fixed on the remains, she burned their image into her head for the coming days and weeks she and her colleagues would work the investigation.

  ‘Found anything useful?’ she asked, her voice steady.

  Chong carefully straightened the tarpaulin and gave it a close examination. ‘Joseph used those exact words earlier.’

  Lieutenant Joe Corrigan. Polite, personable, on secondment to headquarters as a firearms trainer from Boston, Connecticut, also a colleague in the Unsolved Crime Unit.

  ‘Not much so far.’

  Chong pointed at various parts of the remains. ‘What may be fibres under the fingernails there, bits of tree bark caught within the hair, plus a fine specimen of a stag beetle trapped inside a fold of this.’ She pulled the tarpaulin taut, giving it careful scrutiny.

  ‘I have my doubts she was killed here. Relay that to Sergeant Nightmare while I finish up.’