Dead Lucky (37 page)

The glow from the fire lit the grounds to the back of the house. Party goers sat on the grass, the same distant look he’d seen on Tillman etched onto their faces.

The ground stretched into the distance, a line of trees marking the border. Lambert switched on his torch, the beam of light eating into the darkness, the land vast and vacant. He scanned across the perimeter, moving forward until he caught the outline of a figure who looked as if he was scrambling over some kind of fencing. ‘There,’ he said to Tillman, pointing to the figure.

‘Let’s go,’ said Tillman, ‘there must be a reason he’s trying to leave.’

They inched across the grass, the torch shining in front of them. Even with the help of the light, they still stumbled in the grass, which was pitted with holes, Lambert trying not to think about the mines Blake had claimed were planted in the ground.

‘He’s still there,’ said Tillman, his breathing coming in rapid expulsions of air. The figure was still climbing the fence, as if he was stuck or was taking a rest. ‘You go ahead, I’m gone.’

Lambert tried to run, but his lungs were not functioning properly. His limbs ached, heavier than he could remember. He ran as if he was in a nightmare trying to escape a foe, the normal laws of physics not applying.

The escapee looked as if he was having the same problem. Lambert closed in on the target still balanced on the fence. The man was caught in some netting, and was shaking his left leg frantically, trying to escape.

Lambert stopped twenty yards from the figure, and shone his torch. The figure turned to face the beam, an animal caught in the headlights. ‘Atkinson?’ asked Lambert, trying not to recoil.

What was left of Atkinson snarled back at him. His lips had been burnt clean off, as had half his face. It was a wonder he was still moving. Even from this distance, Lambert could see his revealed gums, the hint of jaw bone beneath melting flesh. Somehow, he pulled his left leg free, and fell over the fence.

‘Don’t move,’ said Lambert, running to the fence, a dart of adrenaline driving him on.

Atkinson was up and moving away. His shirt had been burnt off his back, bits of it stuck to his flesh like an absurd collage. Lambert didn’t have to run to catch up. The man was moving out of pure instinct, and wouldn’t last long. ‘Stop moving, Neil. We can get you some help.’

Atkinson collapsed onto the ground. His trousers were ripped at the leg, a gash of six or seven inches on his right thigh. ‘I told you we were alike,’ he said, coughing, his voice distorted almost beyond recognition.

Lambert took out his pepper spray and cuffs, though Atkinson had more chance of dying at the moment then escaping. ‘We’re not alike.’

‘We’re both here. Both alone. Both with no one.’

Lambert loomed over the collapsed figure. The hair on Atkinson’s head had been singed, large bubbles had formed on his scalp. ‘Where’s Kennedy?’

‘We’d moved her before the explosion. It wasn’t meant to happen. Believe it or not, I didn’t want anyone innocent hurt.’ Atkinson’s laugh turned into a rasping cough as he spat out a lump of blood soaked mucus onto the ground. ‘That can’t be good.’

‘All you’ve done is harm innocent people, Atkinson. Where did you move her?’

‘They weren’t innocent, you must see that.’

It was pointless trying to reason with him. He radioed for medical assistance. ‘Where is she?’

‘I don’t know. I told you, the team went to move her when I knew you had Blake.’

‘Blake’s family?’

‘All gone, I hope. They were at the front of the house where the explosives were set.’

‘Why did you have explosives there in the first place?’

‘For Blake, at the end, once he’d suffered what I suffered. She was only fourteen, you know, when he first made her work for him. I was eight. She was my sister. She looked after me from the first day I arrived.’

‘Didn’t Blake remember you?’

‘How would he? I was ten when she died. He didn’t get involved in any of the dirty business himself. I only saw him once at the home, but I remembered his face. You know today’s the day?’

‘Thirty years since Elaine Jacobson committed suicide. It doesn’t explain your actions. Moira Sackville, the Dempsey family, they weren’t to blame.’

Atkinson was shivering. ‘Eustace and Laura can have a lifetime to consider that, can’t they.’

The medical team appeared, accompanied by Tillman. ‘They found Kennedy. I went back,’ he said.

One look at Tillman was enough to tell him the news wasn’t good. Animation had returned to the man’s eyes, his focus on Atkinson.

Lambert studied Tillman as the paramedics worked on Atkinson. ‘Where is she?’

‘They’ve taken her to A and E. Extensive burns. She may have lost an eye.’

‘You should go. I can process Atkinson.’

Tillman clenched his hand. ‘He’s not leaving here, Michael.’

Lambert had been here before. Years ago, he’d rescued Tillman from a group who’d held him captive for two days. After being rescued, Tillman had taken Lambert’s gun and executed the remaining captor who had tortured him during the ordeal. Lambert had covered for him then, but would be unable to protect the man now if he tried something. ‘You’re carrying?’ said Lambert.

‘Excuse the paramedics,’ said Tillman.

The paramedics had strapped Atkinson to a stretcher. ‘You’re not thinking, Glenn. Atkinson won’t survive the night anyway, and if he does his life is over. You try something now, and he’d have ruined your life as well.’

Tillman ignored him, the shock had taken him over. He reached inside his jacket and withdrew his gun.

The paramedics had their backs turned, treating Atkinson. As Tillman pointed the weapon, Atkinson grinned a lipless smile through his breathing mask.

Lambert didn’t know if Tillman would go through with it but couldn’t take the risk. He sprayed Tillman directly in the eyes with the pepper spray, Tillman falling to the ground with a scream. As he fell, Lambert took the gun from him and slid it inside his jacket before the paramedics could see.

‘His pepper spray has gone off,’ said Lambert to one of the paramedics. The woman exchanged a look with her colleague before tending to Tillman.

Lambert bent down as the woman applied cooling liquid to Tillman’s eyes. ‘You look after him. I’ll help your colleague get the other man back to the ambulance,’ said Lambert.

Atkinson looked disappointed as Lambert lifted the stretcher. Atkinson watched him all the way as they carried his body through the fields at the back of Blake’s ruin of a house. It was hard to imagine the man had once been a ten-year-old boy, but lying on the stretcher, his face deformed beyond recognition, Lambert caught a glimpse of that wasted innocence as the man looked at him for one final time before closing his eyes forever.

If you loved
Dead Lucky
then turn the page for an exclusive extract from the gripping first book in the DCI Michael Lambert series,
Dead Eyed
…

Chapter 1

Michael Lambert waited at the back of the coffee shop. To his right, a group of new mothers congregated around three wooden tables. Some held their tiny offspring; the others allowed their babies to sleep in the oversized prams which crowded the area. Two tables down, a pair of men dressed in identical suits stared at their iPads. Next to them, a young woman with braided hair read a paperback novel. All of them looked up as Simon Klatzky walked through the shop entrance and shouted over at him.

Lambert ignored the glances. He’d arrived thirty minutes earlier, out of habit checking and rechecking the clientele. He hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. He stood and beckoned Klatzky over. He’d last seen him two years ago at the funeral. ‘Good to see you again, Simon,’ he said.

‘Mikey,’ said Klatzky. Like Lambert, Klatzky was thirty-eight. He’d lost weight since the last time they’d met. His face was gaunt, his eyeballs laced with thin shards of red. When he spoke, Lambert noticed a number of missing teeth. The rest were discoloured and black with cheap fillings. His face cracked into a smile. He stood grinning at Lambert. In his left hand he clutched an A4 manila envelope.

‘Sit down then. What do you want to drink?’ said Lambert.

Klatzky shrugged. ‘Coffee?’

Lambert ordered two black Americanos and returned to the table.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ said Klatzky.

Klatzky had called earlier that morning desperate to meet. He’d refused to tell Lambert the details over the phone but had insisted that it was urgent. From the smell of him, it hadn’t been important enough to stop him visiting a bar first.

Klatzky’s hands shook as he sipped the coffee. ‘I thought it best you see for yourself,’ he said, looking at the envelope still clutched tight in his hand.

Lambert sat straight in his chair, scratching a day’s growth of stubble on his face. It was genuinely good to see his old friend. He’d only agreed to meet him as he’d sounded so scared on the phone. Now he was here, Lambert regretted not seeing more of him in the last two years.

‘How have you been, Si?’

‘So-so. I’m sorry I haven’t called before.’ He hesitated. ‘And now, contacting you in these circumstances.’ He still had a strong grip on the envelope, his knuckles turning white with the effort.

‘I’m not working at the moment, Simon.’

‘I didn’t know who else to talk to.’ Klatzky produced a bottle of clear liquid from his grainy-black rain jacket and poured half the contents into his coffee cup.

Some things didn’t change. ‘Are you going to show me then?’ Lambert didn’t want to rush him, but he didn’t like surprises. He needed to know what Klatzky wanted.

Klatzky drank heavily from the alcohol-fused drink, momentarily confused.

‘The envelope, Si.’

Klatzky stared at the envelope as if it had just appeared in his hand. He handed it to Lambert, his body trembling.

Klatzky’s name and address were printed on the front. There was no stamp. ‘You received this today?’

‘It was there when I got back.’

‘Back from where?’

‘I was out last night. Got in early this morning.’ He looked at Lambert as if expecting a reprimand.

Lambert opened the envelope and pulled out a file of A4 papers. Each page had a colour photo of the same subject taken from a different angle. Lambert tapped the table with the knuckles of his left hand as he read through the file.

‘It’s him, Mike,’ said Klatzky.

The subject was the deceased figure of an emaciated man. The skin of the corpse was a dull yellow. Wisps of frazzled hair clung to the man’s cheek bones, matted together with a green-brown substance. The corpse’s mouth was wide open, caught forever in a look of rictus surprise. Where the man’s eyes should have been were two hollow sockets. Tendrils of skin and matter dripped down onto the man’s face. Lambert recognised the Latin insignia carved intricately into the man’s chest. He placed the file back in the envelope, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.

‘Well?’ asked Klatzky.

‘Where did you get this from?’

Klatzky poured more of the clear liquid into his cup. ‘I told you. It was there this morning when I got back. Why the hell has this been sent to me, Mike?’ he asked, loud enough to receive some disapproving looks from the young mothers.

Lambert rubbed his face. If he’d known what was in the envelope, then he would never have suggested meeting in such a public place. ‘I’ll talk to some people. See what I can find out. I’ll need to keep this,’ he said.

‘But why was it sent to me, Mikey?’

‘I don’t know.’ Lambert checked the address on the envelope. ‘You’re still in the same flat, over in East Ham?’

‘Afraid so.’

‘Have you seen anyone else recently?’

‘You mean from Uni? No. You’re the first one I’ve seen since the…’ he hesitated. ‘Since, the funeral.’

Lambert replayed the images in his head, trying to ignore the expectation etched onto Klatzky’s face. The inscription on the victim’s chest read:

In oculis animus habitat.

The lettering, smudged by leaking blood, had dried into thick maroon welts on the pale skin of the man’s body. Lambert didn’t need to see the man’s eyeless sockets to work out the translation:

The soul dwells in the eyes.

They left the coffee house together. ‘Do you have somewhere else you can go?’ asked Lambert.

‘Why? Do you think I’m next?’ asked Klatzky.

Lambert wasn’t sure what Klatzky had put in his coffee but the man was swaying from side to side. He placed his hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Let’s not panic. These might not have come from the murderer. But until we do find out where they came from, and why they were sent to you, it would be sensible to stay away from the flat.’

‘Should we tell Billy’s parents or something? Christ, what are they are going to think?’

Billy Nolan had been the ninth and, until now, last victim of the so called Souljacker killer. A close friend of Lambert and Klatzky, Nolan was murdered in his final year at Bristol University where they had all studied. The killer had never been caught and everything Lambert had seen in the file suggested that he had started working again.

‘Look, you need to get somewhere and rest up. Let me worry about the details.’

‘I want to help, Mikey.’

‘You can stay out of trouble. That will help the most. I’ll contact you when I know something.’ He grabbed Klatzky’s hand and shook it. ‘It’ll be okay, Si.’

Klatzky’s handshake was weak, his palm wet with sweat. He swayed for a second before stumbling across the road to a bar called The Blue Boar.

Lambert stood outside the coffee shop, his hand clutched tight to the envelope. Years ago Lambert would have jumped straight into the investigation. The responsible thing would be to locate the Senior Investigating Officer on the case, inform them that Klatzky had received the material. But he needed time to process the information, to decipher why Klatzky had received the photos.

He walked to Clockhouse station and caught a train to Charing Cross, his mind racing. Making sure no one could see him, he opened the envelope. He scanned each page in turn, studied every detail. The photographs were direct copies from a crime report. The photographer had captured the corpse from all angles. The camera zoomed in on the victim’s wounds. The ragged skin around the eye sockets, the incision marks magnified in gruesome detail, the intricate detail of the Latin inscription, each letter meticulously carved into the victim’s skin. It was definitely a professional job.