The Disciple (2 page)

Jason shut the bedroom door and pulled a chest of drawers across it. He yanked back the curtains and opened the window. Immediately the cool spray of rain hit his face, soothing him. He looked down into the gloom of the overgrown front garden, at the billowing privet hedge that his aunt had been nagging him to trim, glad now that she’d refused to pay him and it had been left untended. If necessary, if he had to jump, Jason was confident it
would break his fall. Now all he could do was wait. He clutched his phone and pondered ringing the police but, before he could decide, the handle of the bedroom door turned. After a couple of increasingly urgent turns, it began to reverberate under the shoulder of the intruder.

Jason took a huge gulp of air and balanced himself on the sill. The door crashed again and the chest of drawers began to shift. His eyes closed, Jason launched himself into the void.

A couple of seconds later, he felt the breath leave his body as he hit the privet. He could feel his skin begin to tear from dozens of tiny scratches but felt himself come to a near stop, cushioned by the hedge’s volume. Under Jason’s weight, the hedge began to topple but he was able to cling on by grabbing a few flailing branches. He used their movement to land his feet on the pavement of Station Road.

Jason quickly righted himself. He looked down at his right hand. Incredibly his mobile was still in his palm. The display was lit. Another message.

Behind you.

Before Jason could turn he felt a hand grab his damp hair and pull back his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the glint of a blade lifting towards his left ear, then a short, sharp pain as a hand pulled heavily across his throat …

Detective Sergeant Laura Grant walked unsteadily across the beach. A combination of the shifting shingle and the need to hold the two Styrofoam cups of coffee steady caused her to stumble as she picked her way towards the small huddle gathered around the tarpaulin-covered body spreadeagled by the sea’s edge.

Scene of Crime Officers swarmed around the body, working with uncommon haste before the elements returned to launder the evidence. Some took pictures, some dug in the sand with
trowels looking for non-existent artefacts, others combed hair and bagged hands.

Grant rubbed her eyes as she walked. She’d only just returned to work after her sick leave, and though she felt the unscheduled bout of exercise was beneficial, the unexpected glare of the low sun certainly wasn’t.

Trying not to stare ghoulishly towards the tarpaulin, she reached the hastily erected police tape and bobbed under with some difficulty as Dr Hubbard, the most senior forensic pathologist in Sussex, re-covered the body and rose from his haunches to speak to Detective Chief Inspector Joshua Hudson.

‘White male, forty-ish. He’s been dead no more than eight hours and no less than six, I’d say.’

Hudson looked at his watch. ‘Which would mean he drowned between four and six this morning,’ he said, sweeping back his thick grey hair with a tobacco-stained hand. ‘Early bird, eh?’

‘Or very late, Chief Inspector. Depends on your point of view. It is the weekend. And please don’t pre-empt my findings on COD.’

‘He didn’t drown?’

‘It’s difficult to say definitively at this moment, Chief Inspector. I like to keep an open mind.’

‘Fine. He
probably
drowned,’ prompted Hudson, lighting up a cigarette and ignoring the reproachful glance of one of the SOCOs.

‘Probably. But it’s not exactly Cape Horn round here,’ observed Hubbard, surveying the calm sea. ‘And he’s wearing boxers, not swimming shorts, so he wasn’t planning a dip.’

‘A lot of them aren’t, Doc, until they’ve had a dozen Breezers and God knows how many tequila slammers.’

Laura Grant held out a cup of white froth towards Hudson.

‘True. But he’s fit for his age. Powerful legs – though not from swimming.’

There was a hint of smugness at that and Grant squinted up at the doctor for further explanation.

Hudson, however, had missed it. ‘These things happen to the
fittest people, Doc,’ he said and took his coffee with a brief wink at Grant and a quick ‘Cheers, darlin’’. Grant glanced up at the two uniformed officers on crowd control. PCs Wong and West both gave her a sly grin to provoke a reaction to her first ‘luv’, ‘sweetie’ or ‘darlin’’ of the day but Grant maintained the face of a stoic.

‘Still …’

‘Look, doc, he’s got shorts on. He went in the water and I’m ruling out a shark attack,’ said Hudson. Grant and the two uniformed officers exchanged an amused glance. Even one of the normally taciturn SOCOs managed a smile. ‘So just tell me he went for a swim and drowned so we can all go home.’

‘There is some trauma to the head,’ replied Hubbard.

‘Probably from a boat.’

‘Even so, I’ll need to examine the wound to find traces of boat.’

‘What about his watch?’ asked Grant, deciding it was time to pretend she was a functioning police officer. They all looked at the dead man’s wrist.

‘What about it?’

‘Looks expensive, guv. If it’s waterproof he might have gone for a dip voluntarily. But if it’s not he would have taken it off. Unless …’ she said with a tilt of her head for emphasis.

‘… unless he was murdered,’ nodded Hudson, kneeling to look at it. ‘12.05. Sorry, luv – waterproof.’

Grant shrugged her shoulders. ‘Doesn’t mean he didn’t commit suicide, guv.’

‘Suicide? How about it, Doc?’

‘I’ll say it again, I’m ruling nothing out. If you found his clothes …’

Hudson looked at Grant. ‘We’re on it,’ she said. ‘We’ve got uniform following the tide back. Maybe he left his ID …’

‘A suicide note would be better,’ added Hudson. ‘You’ll do a tox kit on him?’ he asked Hubbard, who rolled his eyes. ‘Bloody tourists. Why can’t they die at home?’

‘Oh, he’s not a tourist, Inspector!’ the doctor interjected.

Grant and Hudson turned to him, impressed.

‘How can you tell that?’ asked Grant, half-expecting some labyrinthine Sherlock Holmes monograph on ‘The Identification of Tourists’.

The good doctor permitted himself a satisfied smirk at the sudden attention. ‘Because I know who he is.’ Hudson pulled back the cover and gazed at the black and blue face on the sand. ‘That’s Tony Harvey-Ellis. I’ve met him a couple of times. Rotary Club, you know. And maybe even a rugby club do, I can’t be sure. But I know he used to play to quite a good standard. He’s a fairly big cheese in Brighton.’

‘Are we talking Dairylea triangle big? Or Christmas Stilton?’ asked Hudson, now dismayed that his workload on the case was suddenly threatening to escalate.

‘Stilton definitely – he’s one of the partners in Hall Gordon Public Relations. They’ve got that large building on the front – pretty successful by all accounts, though I’ve always considered him to be a bit of a prat. Really fancied himself, if you ask me.’

Hudson reached again for his cigarettes. ‘Great. That’s all we need.’

Jason Donovan Wallis woke clutching his throat, panting for his last breath, trying to staunch the blood from a wound inflicted many times before. His gasps slowed as recognition dawned and he became aware of his surroundings. His heart rate levelled but with relief came the tears, slow and unwelcome but above all silent. All signs of weakness were ruthlessly mocked in White Oaks, so inmates cried with the mute button on.

Jason lay back on his bunk. His T-shirt was soaked with sweat so he tore it off, wiped it around his tear tracks and slung it on the floor. He sat up on his bunk and tried to calm himself by taking deep breaths, as softly as he could manage so as not to wake his roommate.

The sun slammed in through the grimy curtain-free window,
flat like a searchlight in a watchtower across the quadrangle. He shielded his eyes. Was this it? His life. Every morning, waking up in a fug of moisturised panic, remembering the old woman begging for mercy, or the sheet-covered trolleys of his butchered family, or, worst of all, the faceless psycho chasing him, killing him. What was it Father Donetti had told him after Sunday Service?
Cowards die many times.
How many times, he hadn’t seen fit to mention. Jason hoped it wasn’t too many more.

At least here the only danger was from other inmates, young offenders keen to seek out those weaker than themselves so they could pass on abuse from further up the hierarchy. So far he’d managed to keep his head down and hang tough in all the right places.

Jason stood and pulled his blanket over his pillow and tiptoed over to his bag, already packed for his release. He pulled out a fresh T-shirt, dragged it over his head and crept to the window to look out at the chill of the morning. It was early but he still had to screen his eyes from the low sun. He looked over the grounds, which were covered in a light frost, down the drive to the main gate, and then across at the outbuildings, which housed most of the workshops where the day staff tried to teach some of the inmates a trade.

For the first time since his sentence began, Jason was invaded by a pang for freedom, a yearning to get out of the block and wander round the site. He could have it to himself. He could even walk down the drive to the gates and peer at the world outside. If he really wanted, he could open the gate and walk out. If he wanted …

Hudson and Grant stood either side of the sheet-covered steel trolley. The two women were huddled in position, the younger slightly behind the elder, holding onto her arm with both hands. Hudson nodded to the mortuary technician, who peeled the sheet back from the corpse.

The older woman screamed and collapsed to the floor, the
younger woman’s flimsy grip on her arm insufficient to keep her upright. Hudson managed to grab her and haul her up. The young girl ignored her plight and stared open-mouthed at the body of Tony Harvey-Ellis.

‘Oh God, no,’ she said, tears streaming down her face, her breath coming in short hard bursts. ‘Oh God. Oh God.’

A second later the girl seemed to become aware of her surroundings. Her arms sought her mother and gathered her into an embrace, each wedging their tear-stained face onto the shoulder of the other.

Grant nodded at the technician, who re-covered the body with appropriate solemnity.

Hudson posed the superfluous question. ‘Is that your husband’s body, Mrs Harvey-Ellis?’