Remains of the Night (Murder Force Book 3) Read online

  Remains of the Night

  Adam J. Wright

  Contents

  The Murder Force Series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  The Murder Force Series

  Eyes of the Wicked

  Silence of the Bones

  Remains of the Night

  House of the Dead

  Echo of the Past

  Chapter 1

  He slipped through the night like a hot knife through butter.

  The van was half a mile behind him now, on the track that cut through the woods, parked among the pine trees, shadowed from the moonlight by the canopy of foliage. He was sure no one would stumble across it; it was almost 3 a.m. and although the day had been warm, an insidious chill had crept into the air, giving the night a sharp, cold bite.

  If there were any campers in the woods, they’d be wrapped tightly in their sleeping bags, waiting for the warm light of dawn to arrive, not taking a stroll among the dark pines.

  He traversed the field between the woods and the house quickly and quietly. The tools in his rucksack didn’t make a sound. He’d swaddled them in lengths of cloth to make sure of that.

  Fog lay over the field, shrouding the houses in the distance—and hiding him from anyone who might still be awake and looking out of a window.

  He pushed that thought away. Nobody was going to see him. Everyone was asleep. The night belonged to him alone.

  A row of bushes separated the field from the housing estate. The bushes had grown around an old, low wooden fence and there was a place where the branches had been cut back, exposing the horizontal wooden rails. This gap was probably used by the estate kids as a shortcut to the woods.

  Now, he would use it for his own purposes.

  He vaulted the fence easily, pausing on the other side to study the houses that had appeared through the fog. He was facing the rear of the properties. Back gardens enclosed by fences. Dark bedroom windows and French doors that had probably been wide open today, while families sat out on the patios during the hot afternoon, but were now closed and locked against the night.

  Against people like him.

  When he was sure that every light was extinguished, and every occupant most likely asleep, he moved silently to the house that was his destination.

  The fence was a wooden, slatted affair that was barely eight feet high. With a quick jump and a little pressure from the toes of his boots on the wooden slats, he was over it in seconds. Crouching in the garden, he paused again, listening.

  Somewhere far away, an owl hooted. The sound carried easily on the cold, still air. The bird could be in the trees of the nearby woods, or farther away, gliding through the night as it hunted its prey.

  He tried the handle on the French doors, to confirm that they were actually locked. It would be easy for someone in the Jenson family—the family that lived here—to leave them unlocked by mistake, perhaps while bringing rubbish out to the wheelie bins in the back garden.

  No such luck. The handle didn’t move. The door was locked.

  He reached into the front pocket of his jeans and his gloved fingers found the key he’d put in there earlier. It was the only key he was carrying in his pockets. The keys to his own house—and the van keys—were in the rucksack, wrapped in an old rag to keep them from making any noise.

  He withdrew the single key from his pocket and slid it into the lock that the Jenson family believed kept them safe at night.

  He turned it slowly and the latch disengaged with a soft metallic click.

  Pulling the door open just enough to allow him to slip inside, he stepped into the house and closed the door behind him. He locked the door and carefully placed the key back into his jeans pocket. When the police got here tomorrow, there was no point letting them know he had a key. In fact, they’d think he’d broken in by smashing a window. He’d take care of that when he left.

  But that was a job for later. He had another job to do before that, and the tools he needed were in the rucksack.

  Shrugging the straps from his shoulders, he set the rucksack on the settee. In the darkness, the furniture and other items in the living room were nothing more than dark, bulky shapes, but he’d been here in the daylight, and he knew the layout of the room like the back of his hand. The last time he’d been here, he’d taken photos of every square inch inside the house with a Polaroid camera and taken them home to be studied and memorised. He could walk through the house blindfolded and not bump into anything.

  Unless the dog got in his way.

  Where was Bertie, anyway?

  Bertie was the Jenson family’s Jack Russell. The dog was deaf, which might explain why he hadn’t come to investigate the sounds in the living room.

  Unzipping the rucksack, he found the bag of Doggy Treatz and opened it. A pungent smell of beef wafted into the air. That should get the dog’s attention.

  Sure enough, a few seconds later, the dog could be heard padding down the stairs. Bertie entered the living room, a tail-wagging dark shape. He didn’t bark but his nose made a snuffling noise as it sought the origin of the beefy smell.

  “Hi, Bertie.” He crouched down to pet the dog, scratching behind the pricked up ears and between the dog’s muscular shoulder blades. “You want some of these?”

  Bertie let out a short yap that was friendly rather than aggressive, but might wake a member of the family nonetheless.

  “Here you go.” He pushed one of the treats at the dog to keep it quiet, pouring a couple more onto the carpet. “You wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.

  Taking a small torch from the rucksack, and leaving the dog in the room, he went into the kitchen. He didn’t need the torch to light his way but when he got into the kitchen, he needed it to find something specific.

  He clicked the light on, aiming it at the floor, and swept the beam over the tiles until it came to rest on the dog’s feeding area. A metallic bowl of water sat next to an identical bowl that was currently empty. Both bowls had Bertie’s name on them, along with a cartoon bone and paw print.

  Finding a tin of dog food in one of the cupboards, he spooned some into the food bowl and took it, and the water, back to the living room.

  Bertie was still eating the Doggy Treatz, hoovering them up from the carpet with his tongue.

  “Come on, boy, I’ve got more food for you.” He opened the door that he knew led to the understairs storage area. The Jensons kept their hoover in here, as well as shoes, coats, and a dog carrier with Bertie’s name on it.

  He placed the bowls on the floor in the storage area and poured some more treats onto the floor next to them. Bertie, tail still wagging, followed his nose and entered the understairs area.

  “Good boy.” He closed the door, shutting the dog under the stairs.

  He wanted to make sure he didn’t get bit while carrying out the next part of his plan. Although Bertie was generally a friendly dog, his attitude might change when he saw his family threatened.

  Best to keep him locked under the stairs.

  Returning to the ru
cksack, he reached inside and pulled out the hammer wrapped in old rags. He unwrapped it carefully and placed the rags back into the bag before searching for the ropes and the tin of spray paint.

  Everything else he needed was already in his pockets.

  He switched off the torch and walked slowly to the foot of the stairs.

  Looking up into the darkness, he listened for any sign that his presence in the house had been detected.

  All he heard was someone snoring in one of the bedrooms.

  Setting foot on the bottom step, he grinned.

  It was time to do what he came here to do.

  Cindy Holloway looked at the clock for the third time in five minutes. Her shift was nearly over, and she wanted nothing more than to get home and crawl into bed next to her husband Tim. She’d been here at the Control Centre for almost seven hours, and her eyelids felt like they were made of lead. She barely had the strength to hold them open any longer.

  It didn’t help that she had only been back at her job for a week after taking maternity leave. After the arrival of Amy—her and Trevor’s first child—sleep was a rare commodity in the Holloway household, and having to work a night shift when you were already knackered just compounded the problem.

  Still, only ten minutes left. Then she could get home, close her eyes, and drop into a deep slumber for at least a few hours.

  “You okay,” her friend Bernice said, face appearing over the divider that delineated their work stations.

  Cindy let out a long breath. “Yeah, I’m all right. It’s been a long shift.”

  “Tell me about it. It’s been a quiet one as well, and in a way, that makes it feel even longer. Does that make sense? It’s not like I think there should be more people calling 999 tonight, or anything. Thank goodness, less people need the emergency services, you know? But if my brain doesn’t get some sort of stimulation at this time in the morning, it starts shutting down.”

  “Same here. I feel like a zombie.”

  “How’s the little ‘un doing?’

  “She’s great.” Cindy mustered a smile and picked up her mobile. She showed Bernice the lockscreen picture, which was a photo of Amy making a face at the camera, her chin covered in baby food.

  “Aww, she’s so cute. She’s got your eyes.”

  Cindy smiled again, feeling a surge of pride. “Thanks. I--“

  Her words were cut short by a ringing in her headphones. She answered it immediately.

  “Police, what’s your emergency?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line, although she could hear someone breathing. This was all she needed to end her shift; a crank caller. What person in their right mind would call 999 as a joke at four in the morning?

  She wanted to ask the caller that question but realised that the person on the other end of the line might not be able to speak, for some reason.

  “Hello, are you all right?”

  “You need to go to 42 Chase Crescent,” a male voice said flatly.

  “42 Chase Crescent,” she repeated, typing the address into her computer. “Has there been an incident?”

  “It’s the home of the Jenson family. They’re dead. I killed them. I killed them all.”

  The line went dead.

  Chapter 2

  The sound of the alarm clock woke Tony Sheridan. Sitting bolt upright in bed, he looked around the room, taking a couple of seconds to realise where he was. When it dawned on him that he was in his flat, he relaxed back onto the pillows and reached over to hit the button on the clock, silencing the nerve-shattering jangling sound coming from the damned thing.

  No sooner had the alarm clock been silenced than Tony’s phone started to vibrate. The name DI Summers appeared on the screen.

  As he reached for it, he wondered if this call meant there was a new case for the team. Since their journey to Derbyshire over two months ago, the members of Murder Force had been confined to the old school building which served as their headquarters.

  Nothing had occurred lately that Superintendent Gallow felt was worthy of the team’s attention. Even the media had been quiet lately, as far as crime was concerned.

  That was a good thing, of course, because the media tended to sink its teeth into crimes that were either gruesome enough to warrant sensationalist headlines or tragic enough to touch the public’s emotions.

  During this quiet period, the team had spent most of the last twelve weeks going over old cases—some decades old—looking for links that might have been missed when the original investigations had been carried out. They were looking for any indicators that there might be a serial killer at large; someone whose crimes had been recorded at separate events but were actually the work of one person.

  They’d found tenuous links here and there but nothing that couldn’t be explained by pure coincidence.

  Although they hadn’t found anything concrete, Tony was sure there could be one, and maybe even two, serial killers out there whose work had gone unnoticed. The method of finding them—searching through the system for crimes that may have been perpetrated by the same person—was tedious and painstaking, but if it yielded even one arrest, it was worth it.

  He answered the phone. “Dani, what’s up?”

  “I need you to meet me at 42 Chase Crescent, York. There’s been a murder.”

  He sat up, immediately alert. “What’s happened?”

  “Not over the phone, Tony. Just get down here.”

  “On my way.” He ended the call and tossed the phone onto the bed as he made his way to the bathroom. After a quick shower, he put on tan-coloured corduroy trousers and a light blue shirt. Opening the curtains—he had blackout curtains to help him sleep—he squinted at the morning sunlight shining through the sash window.

  On the street below, a number of people hurried along the pavement, some of them on their way to work at the nearby York Hospital. The ones who weren’t in nurse’s uniforms or shirts and ties were dressed in T-shirts and shorts, or light summer dresses. It was going to be another hot day.

  Tony didn’t like the heat; it made him uncomfortable and irritable. He preferred cool, autumnal days to the heat and brightness of Spring and Summer.

  He picked up a pair of sunglasses from a bowl near the door where he kept his keys and grabbed his blue sports jacket before heading out of the flat and down the stairs to the front door.

  When he got outside, he put the shades on and carried the jacket to his Mini, which was parked a few yards away.

  The interior of the car was like an oven. He put the air conditioning on and checked the SatNav for the location Dani had given him. He certainly didn’t know every road in York, but he was certain he’d never heard of Chase Crescent.

  The computer kicked in, telling him he needed to head north across the city. Wishing the air con would work faster, he pulled away from the kerb and joined the rush hour traffic.

  Fifteen minutes later, arriving at the outskirts of the city, he passed a sign that told him he was entering the Greenwoods Development. No wonder he’d never heard of Chase Crescent; the roads around here were brand new.

  The large sign showed a computerised mockup of a row of houses sitting beneath a deep blue sky. A female jogger ran past on the pavement while a boy and girl played on a front lawn, watched over by smiling parents.

  Tony was sure that his visit to the Greenwoods Development wouldn’t be anywhere near as nice as the idealised sign suggested. In fact, he was certain he was about to encounter a scene that would never be displayed on any sign, ever. An image that would probably be burned into his mind forever.

  As he turned onto Chase Crescent, he understood why Gallow had assigned Murder Force to this particular case. The cul-de-sac was full of vehicles that belonged not only to the emergency services, but also to the press.

  Vans with aerials and satellite dishes affixed to them were parked along the kerb and on-camera interviews were being conducted near the line of police tape that cordoned off the crescent where th
e street terminated. Beyond the houses clustered at the end of the cul-de-sac, Tony could see a field and beyond that, in the sunny distance, a wood of dense trees.

  He parked between two news vans and got out of the Mini, leaving the jacket on the back seat. If he was about to enter a crime scene, he’d have to wear a Tyvek suit over his clothing, anyway, and those things were hot at the best of times. He’d be more comfortable in just his shirt.

  A dark-haired woman with a microphone, closely followed by a cameraman, approached Tony and stuck the mic in his face. “Hello. Are you with the police?” She looked him up and down, the frown on her face indicating that she was doubtful about that.

  “No comment,” Tony said. He walked over to the police tape and showed his Murder Force ID to the uniformed officer stationed there. He was waved through. He stepped beneath the tape and examined the houses facing him.

  Three houses sat together. They were detached but they had been built close enough to each other that it looked as if they were huddled together at the end of the street. Like most new builds, they were non-descript, lacking the character that older houses acquired over time.

  From the outside, the houses looked identical. The only thing that differentiated one of them from the other two was an open front door, from which filed crime scene technicians—or SOCOs, as many detectives called them—holding bags and crates of evidence and loading them into a police van.

  “Tony.” Dani was standing behind the Scenes of Crimes van, waving at him. She was already wearing the white Tyvek boilersuit, with the hood pulled down and the goggles in her hand.