Before She Falls

Book 3: Detective Anna Gwynne

by Dylan Young

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Traditional Mysteries; Female Sleuths; Thrillers; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

When 16-year-old Kimberley Williams’ body is found on the rocks below Southerndown Cliff on a cold autumn day, her parents go into shock. A dog walker says she saw Kimberley jump, but Kimberley’s parents can’t believe their happy little girl would take her own life. Detective Anna Gwynne is called in when threatening messages are found on Kimberley’s phone from an unknown number: Everyone will know your secrets - your weaknesses. Being different is a curse. No one will understand. Anna and her team suspect Kimberley’s death is linked to one of her cold cases - another teenage girl who threw herself under a train one Christmas morning. Someone made these girls jump, and Anna will stop at nothing to find them. Even if she has to confront the demons of her past, the lies she’s told about her own childhood. And then another body is found.... What is the secret they’re all dying for? Can Anna find out before another innocent life is lost? An absolutely gripping thriller that will hook you from beginning to end. If you love Val McDermid, Angela Marsons and Robert Dugoni, you won’t be able to stop listening to Before She Falls.

Release date: November 1, 2018

Publisher: Audible Studios

Print pages: 350

Sample

Depending on the tides, Louise Griffiths either walked the beach or up along the cliff path at least twice a week, rain or shine. She always parked in the Dunraven Bay car park and dressed accordingly. Today, the tide was in and so the beach was out of bounds. It was late September, the day cold and blustery, and Louise wore an anorak, hat and gloves. Toby, her energetic cocker, preferred the beach because the cliff top meant he’d have to stay on a lead. Louise had read lots of horror stories about dogs chasing birds and jumping off viaducts and mountainsides in pursuit. Southerndown Cliff was two hundred and ten feet high when you reached the top. It wasn’t worth the risk. Toby would just have to wait until they reached the other side and the river mouth to run amok.

Unlike Toby, Louise preferred the cliff path. Though it flanked the Bristol Channel, this far around it was an almost west-facing coastline and open to the Atlantic. It made for a bracing stroll, and more often than not, Louise would stand at the very top and wonder at the view. To the south, she’d look out across the channel towards England. Below, at the bottom of the cliff, was the beach, though the rocky limestone shelf and the lack of sand barely qualified. Still, it made for a spectacular landscape that went a long way towards explaining why this spot was such a popular location.

The sharp easterly whipped up the surf and Louise took a handkerchief to her running nose before turning back towards the path to continue her walk, through the second car park at the top of the rise and out on to open common.

There was someone else approaching on the path and Toby looked up, his tail already in overdrive, ready to greet a fellow walker. A smile formed automatically on Louise’s lips and her brain formulated a greeting: a mutual appreciation of nature and the weather that had become her standard gambit over the years. But it froze halfway as the girl came closer. No, strode closer, because there was a determination about this walker that, as she neared, seemed out of place. She would have seen Louise. There was no way of avoiding that, but there was no happy reciprocal smile on her face. As she neared, the girl put her hand up to her forehead and kept her face lowered so as not to make eye contact.

Louise was no psychiatrist, but she’d taught at a local comprehensive for almost fifteen years, so she knew when things, with girls especially, were wrong.

‘Are you OK?’ Louise asked.

The query triggered a reaction. The girl looked up briefly. Louise flinched and felt something, a mixture of shock and alarm, ripple through her. It wasn’t only the girl’s lost, hopeless expression but the large mark on her face that made Louise start. A dark stain like the curved rays of a black sun, obtrusive and obvious, designed to startle. The exchange of looks lasted the briefest of seconds before the girl passed by on a spur that left the main path and headed towards another viewpoint.

‘Hello,’ said Louise to the girl’s back, her voice taut and urgent.

But the girl took no notice. She walked on to where the land began to fall away, where earth started to crumble.

‘Hello?’ Louise said again, but she got no further.

The girl hesitated, half turned and let out one shuddering sob before swinging back to face the sea and, without warning, running towards the edge of the cliff where she dropped, like a stone, into the void.

Something imploded inside Louise and she fell to her knees. Toby barked, unnerved by the strange emotions he sensed, but his voice was drowned out by another’s.

Louise’s anguished wail was lost amidst the sound of the gulls and carried off by the wind into an uncaring sky.

Detective Inspector Anna Gwynne watched her dog, Lexi, sprint away, plant both feet in a controlled skid and duck her head for the retrieve just as the ball she was aiming for hit a pebble and bounced. Lexi lost all footing and rolled. Twice. Whether through sheer luck or canine judgement, she then sprang upright and took the ball cleanly in the air as it bounced once again. Looking enormously pleased with herself, she performed a rolling shake of her torso to get rid of most of the sand and began trotting back towards her owner.

Anna shook her head, smiling. It made the muscles under her eyes bunch up. ‘She’s going to need another bath.’

Next to her, Ben Hawley grinned. ‘Good pickup, Lexi. The old wipeout and snatch.’

Lexi trotted up to where they were standing and dropped the ball at Anna’s feet before looking up at her entreatingly.

Anna tried chastisement. ‘Your muzzle is more sand than fur.’

Lexi wagged her tail.

Anna pressed the end of an orange Chuckit launcher over the ball, picked it up and threw it forty yards towards the water. Lexi followed. They were west of Friars Point in the Old Harbour in Barry, near Cardiff. Boats had moored here since before the sixteenth century. With the tide out, a huge expanse of yellow sand made it a haven for dog walkers. Anna smiled. Even after two months of having Lexi in her life, it tickled her to think of herself as one of those. She’d finally taken the plunge just before Christmas and, with Ben’s help, rescued Lexi, a brown Borador – a Border collie Lab mix – from a shelter near Bristol. Anna still didn’t know why, out of all the dogs, she’d chosen Lexi. The easiest answer was that the dog, who’d sat calmly and watched with bright, intelligent eyes as Anna walked past her kennel, had chosen her.

Something in that appraising look had struck Anna instantly and the deal was done.

This time, Lexi took the ball in full flight as it bounced and, in contrast to the pile-up of moments before, ran a graceful arc before cantering back.

Anna’s work phone beeped a message. Superintendent Mark Rainsford’s name appeared in the text window. Anna frowned. Rainsford rarely texted on a weekend. It must be something important. She glanced at the message.

Take a look at this and we’ll talk later. https://tinyurl/coronercardf

Ben looked at her. She shrugged and handed him the Chuckit. He stepped away to give her some space and called the dog to him. Anna watched Lexi glance her way, as if asking permission.

‘Go to Ben,’ she said.

The dog complied. Lexi had bonded deeply with her and was startlingly intelligent. In a moment of stark self-awareness, Anna looked across at the two living creatures she cared most about in the world and shook her head, wondering what had brought on this sudden, and for her unusual, emotion.

Ben had been the significant other in her life for only a few months longer than she’d owned Lexi. Six months previously, Anna would have scoffed at the suggestion that within half a year she’d have a lover and a dog. And this feeling that now sprang up, this warmth, did so unbidden, leaving her a little hot and bothered. Emotions always did, mainly because they were not at all amenable to analysis and logical explanation: the twin disciplines she used to navigate through life. She stared at the brown dog with white-tipped paws and at the man with a quick smile and healer’s hands. Must be the ozone making me a little high, she thought. She pressed the link Rainsford had texted over. It took her to a newsfeed.

Coroner demands action as inquest hears harrowing details of how Internet challenge caused suicide of 16-year-old girl

A coroner raised concerns yesterday about the increasing danger of children becoming entangled in an Internet challenge known as the Black Squid.

Kimberley Williams, 16, died after jumping off a cliff at a notorious suicide black spot in Southerndown, South Wales. After police examined Kimberley’s social media and Internet activity, her family revealed she had been goaded into leaping by her involvement in a suicide game. In a statement read out to the court, Miss Williams’ sister described how the teenager had become increasingly withdrawn after a recent break-up left her depressed and receiving counselling.

Responding to questions, pathologist Richard Murphy confirmed that Miss Williams died from multiple injuries as a result of the fall and that her face had been painted with the crude image of a black squid.

Dr Katia Piercy, a forensic psychologist, explained to the court that suicide games are thought to have begun as an elaborate hoax, with some children wishing to participate and use the narrative to explain their experiences of self-harm. However, in May of 2017, the Russian authorities, in the wake of some 130 deaths linked to online suicide challenge games, passed a law imposing a maximum of 6 years imprisonment for anyone caught inducing suicide in minors online. Dr Piercy explained that the game Kimberley Williams chose to participate in, known as the Black Squid, involved completing twenty tasks designed to psychologically channel vulnerable participants towards a final suicidal act.

Family members paid tribute to Miss Williams and described her as a bubbly member of the family. Her sister Vanessa said, ‘Kimberley was my best friend. We all loved her to bits. She was an amazing person who got caught up in something really horrible.’

The coroner, Caroline Masters, said she would be writing a report to the chief medical officer as well as to the Chief Coroner for England and Wales. It will also be circulated to the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners.

Anna read it twice more and then rang Rainsford.

‘Morning, Anna. What do you think?’

‘How long have you known about this, sir?’ It came out sharp, almost an accusation.

‘I got a heads-up half an hour ago from a colleague in South Wales Police who knows about you and Shaw.’

Anna suppressed an ironic laugh.

You and Shaw.

Three little words that were the signpost to a minefield. Hector Shaw was a convicted serial killer whose own daughter Abbie had been a victim of the Black Squid. Anna, through her work as the operational lead of Avon and Somerset Constabulary’s cold case squad, had needed to interview Shaw on more than one occasion. As a result, she had become embroiled in his complex case. Still, the thought that she’d become something of an expert on Shaw in other people’s minds was no cause for celebration. Not in the slightest.

Yet it was the obvious answer to why Rainsford’s contact might have told him. Any Black Squid-related search entry on HOLMES, the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, would flag up Abbie Shaw, and by extension her notorious father. And, terrifying as it might seem, Anna’s name was now inextricably linked to him. Shaw had targeted his victims because of their involvement as peddlers or administrators of the game. His killing spree had been a vengeful act, in the course of which he’d gleaned intelligence about other Black Squid victims. Intelligence he’d kept to himself until the last few months when he’d inexplicably chosen Anna as his conduit for revealing the burial sites of more than one of these victims.

Even so, Anna did not have the brief for investigating Black Squid deaths, so Rainsford’s motivation in telling her about Kimberley Williams, especially as it was off their patch, intrigued her.

Operational bubbles were the reality of police work. You existed in your own, or at least your own force’s, little world full of details and minutiae that meant sod all to anyone outside your team. Anna barely knew what was going on in the rest of Avon and Somerset. Her squad, South-West Major Crimes Review Task Force, was a regional unit investigating historical cold cases over three or sometimes four force areas. A suicide in an area outside the MCRTF’s remit would not appear on their radar unless it had some kind of supra-regional significance, or unless someone savvy realised that there was an overlap. Kimberley Williams’ death would need to tick both of those boxes. Shaw’s past wasn’t enough.

‘So why have you sent me this, sir?’

The two long beats of silence answered Anna’s question almost before Rainsford could.

‘This report was in yesterday’s papers. It would explain why I got a call from Whitmarsh this morning. He will have seen it, I’m sure.’

He.

And there it was. The big, lumbering elephant that stomped into the room whenever Rainsford mentioned Whitmarsh prison.

Hector Shaw.

Rainsford continued, ‘George Calhoun, Whitmarsh’s governor, says Shaw is bleating about meeting you but that there’s no need to go to Whitmarsh. He says this one is much closer to home.’

This one. Another body?

‘How close?’

‘Bristol. He won’t give us a location, of course.’

Anna snorted. Of course. He never did. Not revealing the actual location of a buried body was the only way Shaw could guarantee one of his little awaydays from prison. He’d already had a couple and ‘enjoyed’ Anna’s company on both occasions.

‘When?’

‘Tomorrow… Anna? Are you OK with this?’

OK with watching another rotting corpse being dug up while Shaw stares at me with his eyes full of accusation? Why wouldn’t I be?

‘Yes, I’m fine with it,’ she said, despite her true feelings.

‘Good. We’ll catch up tomorrow. I’ll get on to Whitmarsh and get the ball rolling. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.’

She killed the call. Rainsford’s sign-off might have come across as sardonic to someone who didn’t know him. But he didn’t do sarcasm. He’d meant it. Anna allowed herself a little ironic smile at that.

They both knew how dangerous Shaw was. His decision to suddenly cooperate after years of admitting nothing about his knowledge of the Black Squid deaths mystified police and prison authorities alike. And Rainsford was right. Shaw had probably seen the news and it would have upset him. Odd to think that a serial murderer might get upset, but Anna knew that anything to do with the Black Squid was highly likely to get under Shaw’s skin. He’d killed at least six people in his hunt for the person he deemed responsible for his daughter’s suicide. A suicide in which she, too, had drawn a facsimile of a black squid on her face before throwing herself under a train.

Shaw had conceded to Anna that he’d failed to find the twisted mind behind the sickening game. The published details of Kimberley’s death would have rekindled the burning desire for vengeance that had driven him to kill in the first place. And it was that which scared her. Somewhere along the line, Shaw’d seen a way to use her as a tool, revealing the buried victims of the Black Squid to her periodically in order to keep the investigation alive. And though the discoveries had given closure to several families as a result, still Anna found his cat-and-mouse tactics repugnant. She could not say no to Rainsford since Shaw flatly refused to talk to anyone else. To that end she felt as trapped as a buzzing fly in a spider’s web knowing that she had a moral and professional obligation to comply.

There were the obvious sniggering comments from colleagues whenever this was brought up, of course. Anna was a physically fit, attractive, young, female police officer. Why wouldn’t Shaw show an unhealthy interest? Yet in all of her interactions with him, Anna had never sensed the slightest innuendo. Indeed, on more than one occasion he had reminded her that his daughter, had she lived, would have been around Anna’s age.

But Anna doubted that Shaw would ever have discussed with his daughter any of the topics and details he’d revealed to her. Even now, she could hear his nasal voice describing how he’d tortured his victims into telling him what he wanted to know. Delivered always in a stone-cold, matter-of-fact way.

And now she was about to invite him into her life once again. The thought of what the working week might bring made her suddenly shiver.

She looked up and out over the expanse of sea and sand and inhaled deeply, savouring the moment and reminding herself that it wasn’t Monday yet.

They’d agreed on Clifton Observatory in Bristol as the meeting point. This early in the morning it was eerily quiet. The school trips and tourists were yet to arrive, and sensible people who were not at work were all indoors. They were firmly on Avon and Somerset ground here, not more than seven miles from police HQ at Portishead, and they’d dispatched a team to Whitmarsh prison to fetch Hector Shaw in an escorted police van.

Anna had dressed warmly: puffer jacket, gloves and a woolly hat. Arctic plumes moving south across the county had plunged even the South-West into sub-zero temperatures. It had not snowed in Bristol but it was forecast as a significant risk. It wouldn’t last because yet more incoming Atlantic storms to the west were set to blow away the cold. But at this time of year, in the heart of winter, even that was a poisoned chalice.

Rainsford sat in his car, phone to his ear, but Anna, too restless to stay seated, stood outside with the rest of her MCRTF squad, namely DCs Justin Holder and Ryia Khosa. Holder, mid-twenties but looking ten years younger, defied the cold with the arrogance of the young in an unbuttoned padded jacket. He walked forward to meet the arriving transport and pointed to a space behind a Network Rail van parked with its bonnet pointing towards the city. Khosa, a good head shorter than Holder, her face barely visible under the fur-lined hood of the heavy coat she wore, spoke in a muffled voice through the scarf wrapped tightly around her mouth.

‘Bit different to the last time, ma’am.’

Anna nodded. She and Khosa had been in this situation before, the last time on a warm, muggy day in August in a park in Sussex. She’d known then that they’d have to indulge Shaw his ‘expeditions’ again but had not expected it to be in the middle of winter, like this. She felt he preferred the warmer months in order to make the most of getting out of prison, even for a day.

This demand, in the dead of winter, had a sense of urgency about it. Yet all he’d said, communicated to her through the governor of Whitmarsh, was that they needed to get access to the railway line near Leigh Woods. So here they were with two railway workers who’d brought keys to let them into the sealed-off access roads.

Holder came back to join the two female officers. ‘We’re following them in.’

‘Do we know where we’re going?’ Khosa asked.

‘He’s told the driver it’s a storage area somewhere down there, that’s all,’ Holder said.

‘Typical,’ Anna said. It was Shaw’s way. Keeping information to the bare minimum so they had no option other than to follow his lead.

Anna and Khosa hurried back to their Focus, one of two pool cars allocated to the unit, and followed the convoy. It took them across the suspension bridge, spanning the gorge with the dirty-brown river below, and down along the A369 towards Somerset until they got to Ham Green. There they turned right, back towards the river along narrow lanes only wide enough for one vehicle, until they got to a gate where the railway workers got out and used their keys. The Ford sagged on its suspension as the passenger side tyre found a pothole, causing Khosa to curse and apologise in the same breath. She pointed at the satnav on the dashboard and muttered, ‘None of these roads are on the map.’

She was right. The stoned tracks the Ford now navigated with such difficulty were Network Rail access roads used to gain entry to the railway for maintenance. Anna didn’t know this line – the old Bristol to Portishead line from the main station in Temple Meads out to the flat estuary land and the port. It was still used for freight, and the rumour was that they were going to make it a metro link by the end of the decade. But for now, it was a rarely used and desolate stretch through cuttings adjacent to the river, looping in towards Ham Green where there had once been a station.

They drove slowly parallel to the line, the narrow lane widening abruptly into a large, cleared area on which chippings had been laid. Their tyres crunched on the stones as Khosa pulled in and Anna stared out of the windscreen. The actual railway line ran only ten yards away. To her right stood stacks of sleepers, some concrete and others older and wooden. Next to them stood a ten-foot-high mound of grey track ballast chippings. All in all, the space must have been the size of half a football field. Where the stoned parking area ended, bramble and dead fern made a natural barrier bordering the woods beyond. It was a desolate spot.

The Network Rail van had parked in front of them. Holder got out and spoke to the driver. A minute later, the van drove off and Holder stuck his head down to talk through the passenger side window to Anna.

‘Not many people come down here, apparently.’

‘What is this place?’ Anna asked.

‘They call it a sleeper depot. Somewhere to keep spare ballast and sleepers for essential repairs on the line when needed.’

Anna looked at all the parked cars now with their doors closed. There were cadaver dogs and handlers, ground radar contractors, Rainsford, of course, and uniformed support.

All waiting for her.

She pulled on some gloves and got out of the car. Half a dozen other car doors opened as if on cue. From the police Transit, two uniformed officers emerged. Anna knew that at least one of those in the escort vehicle would be armed. She walked across to the van just as the rear doors opened and out stepped Shaw. His hands were cuffed in front of him and he wore a heavy coat over his lurid prison garb of chequered yellow and green. It was the first time she’d seem him in an ‘escape suit’. Someone in Whitmarsh, or even higher up in the Prison and Probation Service, must have decided that Shaw’s jaunts were a significant security risk. The boiler suits were designed to easily identify and prevent the escape of prisoners assessed as flight risks while being escorted outside the prison.

Watching Shaw blinking into the light, Anna was reminded of a bewildered jester transported from some ancient court. But there was nothing funny about Shaw as he stared at the surroundings, taking in the bleak landscape until his eyes landed on Anna. There they stopped and watched her approach. The prison had given him a hat to wear and it hid his shaved head, but his skin looked pale behind the thick glasses that distorted the contour of his face and made his eyes look smaller than they were.

‘Anna,’ he said in his slow Mancunian drawl. ‘Here we are again, eh?’

‘Hector.’ She used his name but didn’t offer a smile.

‘This is real witch’s tit weather,’ he said, shivering inside his coat.

‘Maybe we should get on with it, then.’

‘Good idea.’ Shaw started walking along the stoned area, looking up towards the denuded trees lining the railway and bordering the fields beyond. Anna, watching him carefully, walked with him, the uniformed officer within arm’s reach of Shaw and his gun-carrying colleague five yards behind.

‘What are you looking for?’ Anna asked.

‘I reckon it’s special. Needed a little bit of extra persuasion to tell me about this one did that shit-stain Krastev.’

Shaw hissed out the last two words of the sentence as if they were hawked up phlegm. Anna tried not to think about what it all implied and failed. Krastev, a vicious and sadistic criminal who had eluded capture in his native Bulgaria, Italy and Belgium by fleeing to the UK, had been embroiled in the Black Squid game and consequently Abbie Shaw’s death. Hunted down and captured by Shaw, Krastev had paid the price of that involvement with his life. But not before Shaw had managed to extract a great deal of information. Anna knew that whatever it was they were searching for on this freezing Monday morning would have Krastev’s bloody hands all over it. Such was the pattern. Shaw had already led them to more than one of Krastev’s buried victims, but it was his emphasis on the word ‘persuasion’ that made Anna squirm. As well as information about Krastev’s own murderous activities, Shaw had obtained links to other members of the Black Squid cell that Krastev had been a part of. Targeted by Shaw just as Krastev had been, the crime scene photos of their deaths showed that ‘persuasion’, in Shaw’s hands, was a chapter straight out of the medieval torturer’s handbook.

Shaw swivelled, scanning the horizon. ‘He said something about a fence.’

They passed a pile of wooden sleepers and then another. On the other sid. . .