Behind Closed Doors

Elizabeth Haynes worked for many years as a police analyst. Her debut novel,
Into the Darkest Corner
,
won Amazon’s Book of the Year in 2011 and Amazon’s Rising Star Award for debut novels.

Elizabeth grew up in Sussex and studied English, German and Art History at Leicester University. She worked for seven years as a police intelligence analyst. Elizabeth now lives in Kent with her husband and son, and writes in coffee shops and a shed-office which takes up most of the garden. She is a regular participant in, and a municipal liaison for, National Novel Writing Month – an annual challenge to write 50,000 words in the month of November.

Into the Darkest Corner

Revenge of the Tide

Human Remains

Under a Silent Moon

Table of Contents

• About the Author
  
   
  
• Also by Elizabeth Haynes
  
   
  
• COPYRIGHT
  
   
  
• Dedication
  
   
  
• Part One:  Nothing Is Real But Fear
  
   
  
• Part Two:  Death Is Not The End
  
   
  
• Part Three:  If You Don’t Question It, It Isn’t Real
  
   
  
• Part Four:  Dead Inside
  
   
  
• Part Five:  The Return
  
   
  
• Part Six:  Going Back Is Sometimes The Same Thing As Going Forward
  
   
  
• Part Seven:  Death Is Never The End
  
   
  
• Acknowledgements
  
   
  

Dedicated to the intelligence analysts, who make a difference

To begin with, nothing was certain except her own terror.

Darkness, and stifling heat, so hot that breathing felt like effort, sweat pouring off her so her skin itself became liquid and she thought she would simply melt into a hot puddle of nothing. She tried crying out, screaming, but she could barely hear her own voice above the roar of the engine, the sound of the wheels moving at speed on tarmac. All that did was give her a sore throat. Nobody could hear her.

She tried listening instead, eyes wide with nothing to see. She could hear voices sporadically from somewhere else in the vehicle – two different men – but she didn’t recognise them, nor could she understand what they were saying. She assumed they were speaking in Greek, but the harsh rasp of the words sounded different from the voices she’d heard over the past week at the resort. Lots of ‘th’ sounds, rolled ‘r’s, words ending in ‘a’ and ‘eh’.

Fear came in cycles. The first endless panicky minutes had been very bad: trawling through vague memories of the past few days, trying to identify the mistake she’d made, because this had to be her fault –
this can’t be real, I’m dreaming
–
then the shock realisation that this wasn’t a nightmare, it was really happening. The worst moment of all.

It had been so quick.

She had arrived a bit early at the place where they’d agreed to meet, and she’d been preparing to wait – he’d said he finished work at two – and a van had pulled up beside her. She hadn’t been worried. There were still people around, drunk tourists staggering back up the road towards their hotels. The side door of the van had slid open, and a man got out. He was talking to her, friendly, a smile that showed his teeth. His accent was so strong she couldn’t really tell what he was saying.

‘No, no,’ she’d said. ‘English. I don’t understand.’

But he’d kept yammering on, standing too close to her. She had begun to feel unnerved by it, and something had made her glance to the right, to the gate which led to the Aktira Studios, and in that split second when she’d seen someone she recognised, made eye contact, she had felt something like relief – and then the man had pushed her, a hard shove that sent her sprawling into the back of the van. He’d climbed in after her, slammed the door shut and the van started moving. The man had held her down, put his hand over her mouth, pressing her head into the metal floor so hard that she’d thought her skull was going to burst.

Seconds. The whole thing had taken seconds.

Now, hours since those terrifying first moments, she had reached a plateau brought on by the monotony of driving, the panic overridden by the pain in her arms and legs and the discomfort of being tied hand and foot and having to lie still on the floor of the van. They’d stopped once, very early on, before she’d had time to get over the shock or formulate any plan of escape; by that time the man in the back with her had already tied her up. He got out, leaving her alone, and the van door shut – and they were moving again.

The noise of the engine was unbearably loud; the van would bump and jolt as it went over potholes. Her head ached as a result, sometimes so badly it made her cry. The fear made her cry. Crying made her headache worse, and then it all became pointless, so she would stop for a while and try to sleep in snatches, because sleeping, at least, gave her a brief respite.

And she would dream of him, remember, and wake with tears on her cheeks, thinking,
This
wasn’t supposed to happen.
Then the shock and the fear would kick in, and the whole cycle would begin again.

‘You look done in,’ said Sam, putting a steaming mug of tea on the only part of the desk that wasn’t covered by piles of paper.

‘Thanks,’ Lou replied. ‘I feel it. Kind of hoped the make-up was doing a good job of hiding the bags.’

‘Anything I can do?’

Lou looked up at Sam and smiled at her.
Such a sweetheart
. ‘If there’s anything I can hand over, believe me, I’ll do it like a shot.’

‘Cheers. You know where I am!’

Sam left and Lou went back to answering emails. Yesterday had been so much better. Lou had gone out to a stabbing that the newly renamed North Division were trying to palm off on to Major Crime, but, since the offender was already in custody and happily admitting to his offences in interview, she had been able to hand it back to the Area DI. Elated at such a rare success, she had even managed to slope off before five o’clock, stopping to pick up some food that involved preparation more elaborate than stabbing plastic film with a fork, and had put in a call to a certain dark-haired Canadian senior intelligence analyst.

‘Hey,’ Jason had said, ‘what time are you going to be done?’

‘I’m done already,’ she’d said smugly.

He was laughing. ‘You’re winding me up, right?’

‘No, I am actually on my way home. What are you doing?’

‘Getting my shit together and heading over to yours – right now.’

These opportunities didn’t come along very often, and, while both Lou and Jason knew to make the most of them, perfect nights were over far too quickly. Of course, having such diverting company on a ‘school night’ meant that she ended up getting only four hours’ sleep, and, as if the world was exacting its horrible revenge for her daring to leave early, today had already been about as bad as it could get.

A serious assault that had taken place six weeks ago had been somehow linked to the murder a week or so later of a local businessman, which meant the Major Crime department had inherited a half-arsed job from Division and would have to start it all over again, to make sure that nothing had been missed. Both cases had been rumbling on without Lou’s involvement and now she was going to have to try to pull the two investigations together, with no real insight into where the local officers had got up to so far. If you didn’t have an arrest within a week of an offence, the chances were pretty slim that you would manage to get a good result. And so far there had been no arrests, and no suspects.

A twenty-year-old lad by the name of Ian Palmer had been assaulted after a night out; he’d suffered a serious head injury and had been found in the early hours of the morning lying in a puddle in an alleyway in the town centre. He had not regained consciousness and Major Crime had taken it on because in all probability he never would.

And as for the murder of the businessman – Carl McVey had owned two bars in the town centre and a country pub and restaurant called the Ferryman, beside the river in Baysbury. He was missing for four days before his body was found half-buried in woodland about three miles out of town. He had been badly beaten and his wallet and phone were missing, so the working hypothesis was that it had been a botched robbery.

So far, so good.

There had been no forensic link between the two; nothing obvious connecting the victims, other than that one owned a bar that had possibly been frequented by the other. After this morning’s meeting Sam had made contact with the Force Intelligence Bureau to request the latest intel. Meanwhile the DCs were going to re-interview Palmer’s mother, his friends – see what they could stir up.

Lou reached for the mug of tea, jolted it with the back of her hand and sent a wave of liquid over the nearest case file. As she swore and rummaged through her bag for a tissue, her phone started ringing. Lou glanced at the caller display. Buchanan – just what she needed. Detective Superintendent Gordon Buchanan, officer in charge of Major Crime and Lou’s line manager, was a pain in the backside at the best of times and a dangerous enemy at the worst. The tissue would have to wait.

‘Sir?’

‘Lou. How are you getting on with McVey and Palmer?’

The tone of his voice was not a good sign. As one of his ‘favourites’, Lou was used to being on the receiving end of long, chatty phone calls when Buchanan felt bored, out of sorts or in need of a little light flirtation. To start with a question related to the job was unusual.

‘Still sorting my way through the paperwork, I’m afraid.’
Only got the jobs this morning
, she thought;
give me a bloody chance
.

She looked at the thin brown card which was wrapped around the witness statements relating to the McVey murder, and the puddle of tea gradually soaking into it. Just as well they weren’t the originals.

‘Need you to come up and see me. Whenever you’re ready.’

That sounded even more ominous. ‘I’ll come up now. Do I need to bring anything, sir?’

He just answered with an abrupt, ‘Thanks,’ and hung up.

Lou found a packet of tissues under her hairbrush and wadded two, patting the top of the folder dry. A circle of dark brown stained the lighter brown of the card. Luckily it hadn’t seeped through to the statements underneath, which must have used half a tree and taken some poor bugger two hours to photocopy. Even more luckily, most of the tea had remained in the mug and Lou was grateful for it, draining it in several long gulps as she made her way to the office door.

Footsteps first, then voices, getting closer. She didn’t understand what they were saying, but it seemed to be the same two men. The tone of the voices was jovial and one of them laughed. And then the sound of a key scraping in the metal lock and the door of the van opened.

It was dark outside, and two shapes were standing in the doorway. Automatically she closed her eyes, shrank back.

‘You want water?’ one of the men said. She nodded vigorously and he climbed in beside her. The other one stood at the doorway, his back to them, as though keeping watch.

He was old, in his forties, with dark hair cropped short. He smelled of strong aftershave and cigarettes. He pulled her to a sitting position and put the bottle to her lips; she gulped at it, coughed, choked.

‘Please,’ she said, her voice sounding hoarse, unlike her own. ‘Please…’

He answered her by holding the bottle up again, and drinking was more important than talking after all, so she drank. The water was cold and tasted strange, metallic – like blood.

‘I won’t try to run away,’ she said when the bottle was withdrawn again, ‘but please, my hands hurt so much…’

He looked her in the eyes and to her surprise she saw something like sympathy there, and understanding. Then he reached behind and pulled something from the back of his jeans. He raised it to her face and even in the half-light she saw it was a handgun. She gasped and shrank back from him, and then he laughed.

‘You have a little sister – Juliette.’

Scarlett felt her stomach constrict. ‘What? What about her?’

‘We have people in the town, watching her. You be good, or I call them and they take Juliette too. You understand? We get good money for young girls. Plenty money.’

‘Please, I’ll be good, I promise I’ll be good…’

He put the gun back and pulled her by the shoulder, twisting her so that he could access the ligature around her wrists. The relief when the knot gave and her arms were free was intense – the pain, and the relief…

‘Thank you,’ she said, when she was able to stop whimpering. ‘Thank you. What’s your name?’

He smiled at her. One last drink, and the bottle was empty. ‘You stay quiet. You stay still. Yes? I give you more water later.’

‘Yes, I promise, I promise.’

He edged his way to the back of the van and she was almost sorry to see him go, but at least now her arms were free.

At the back of the van the conversation between the men resumed, less jovial this time. Urgent, staccato phrases. The man who’d waited at the back door was clearly not happy that she had been left untied.

Then, without a backward glance at her, the door was slammed shut and locked and the darkness surrounded her again, a heavy blanket of heat and the smell of her own body, the smells of the inside of the van.

She woke up and the van wasn’t moving. The engine noise was different, somehow; the vibration of the metal floor under her was different. She could feel a rolling, swaying motion. Instantly she felt sick.

As she started to stretch, the pain in her limbs made her cry out. Immediately she heard a sound next to her. A hand went over her mouth. She tried to move but her body felt odd, heavy, as though she was tied up again even though she wasn’t.

‘You quiet,’ a voice said beside her. A man’s voice, heavily accented. She thought it was the same one as before, but her ears felt funny, as if she’d been swimming.

It was dark in here but even so it was hard to focus. Something cold and metallic was pushed against her cheek. She smelled oil and garlic on his hands.

‘You stay quiet or I will kill you.’

Scarlett was struggling to find focus. The world was rocking, spinning, inside her head. It felt easier just to lie still.

‘Where are we?’ she whispered, after a few minutes.

He didn’t answer, or didn’t hear her. She tried to turn her head, to look at him. Whoever he was.

‘Please,’ she said, a little louder. ‘Please, just let me go. I want to go home.’

Movement again, the sounds of shuffling and then his breath on her cheek. ‘I said, you quiet. You not understand?’

She didn’t say anything else. Closed her eyes and waited.

Buchanan was on the phone. Two of the management secretaries – not Mara, whose services were shared between Buchanan and two other superintendents – were at their desks, both of them typing at a speed that surely was not possible. Through the open door to his office, Buchanan saw her and held up a finger to indicate she should wait. She took one of the visitor’s chairs.