Dead Souls

Book 6: D.I. Kim Stone

by Angela Marsons

Genres: Police Procedurals; Female Sleuths; Crime Fiction

Synopsis

The truth was dead and buried… until now. When a collection of human bones is unearthed during a routine archaeological dig, a Black Country field suddenly becomes a complex crime scene for Detective Kim Stone. As the bones are sorted, it becomes clear that the grave contains more than one victim. The bodies hint at unimaginable horror, bearing the markings of bullet holes and animal traps. Forced to work alongside Detective Travis, with whom she shares a troubled past, Kim begins to uncover a dark secretive relationship between the families who own the land in which the bodies were found. But while Kim is immersed in one of the most complicated investigations she’s ever led, her team are caught up in a spate of sickening hate crimes. Kim is close to revealing the truth behind the murders, yet soon finds one of her own is in jeopardy – and the clock is ticking. Can she solve the case and save them from grave danger – before it’s too late? An addictive, sinister crime thriller that will have readers on the edge of their seat. Watch out for more from Detective Kim Stone A detective hiding dark secrets, Kim Stone will stop at nothing to protect the innocent. Silent Scream is the first book in the series. What readers are saying about Dead Souls ‘ Hooked from the very first page… This is the best book I’ve read, by the best author on the shelves. I really can’t wait for the next one.’ Nigel Adams Book Worm ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘I could not put it down and was hooked in from page one to the very last word. The plot is stunning. Very clever and very dark. A 5-star read! A fantastic crime novel from one of my all-time favourite writers ever.’ Booklover Catlady ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘I was captivated from the start, there is just no let-up… I wanted to read at every opportunity, fast-paced and blood pressure raising! Angie Marsons is definitely one of my favourite authors.’ Stef Loz Book Reviews ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Read this book now, it is just that amazing. A gripping, unpredictable story, I couldn’t have been more hooked if I tried. Some of the most vivid writing I've read. Unpredictable and completely absorbing.’ Rachel’s Random Reads ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Brilliant… a terrifying, nail-biting finale where, once again, Kim proves how far she will go to protect her team. Ms. Stone is fast becoming one of the greats of detective fiction. Dead Souls is a must-read book with a topical subject matter that really makes you wonder if you truly know the views of everyone you meet.’ Go Buy the Book ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ Addictive… yet ANOTHER cracker to add to an already stunning series. This stomping great read from an exceedingly talented writer will have you furiously flipping the pages.’ Little Bookness Lane ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘My favourite read of the year so far… Wow, totally fantastic, beautifully written, dark, dangerous and emotional. This series gets better with each book, loved it. I give it 6 stars. ’ Bonnie’s Book Talk ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘ The best book in the series yet, and that takes some doing… grips you by the throat and doesn't let you go to the last heart-pumping chapter. I'm off to hibernate until the next book is published.’ The Book Review Café ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

‘One of the only people to make me cry [Angela Marsons] also takes me right to the edge of my very last nerve. Every. Flipping. Time. This is not a story for the faint-hearted. Best. One. Ever (so far ;) ) 5 stars. Big fat ones. ’ Jen Med Book Reviews ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Release date: April 28, 2017

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 414

Sample

Justin looked down at the blade as it hovered above his wrist. The knife was his mother’s; the trembling was his.

For a second he was overcome by the practicality of the task. Had he chosen the right knife for the job? There were so many of them. Knives in the cutlery drawer. Knives sticking out of a wooden block. A set of sterling silver knives left to his mother that lived in their own decorative box.

This knife was not his first choice. Initially he had reached for the biggest, baddest knife in the drawer. Its edge serrated. A row of sharp teeth like a mountain range.

The handle had felt good in his grip but the thought of those teeth ripping across his skin had made him wince. Ironic, that he was ending his life, yet worried about the pain involved.

He had put it back and reached for another. A long sleek number with a thicker, meatier handle. He’d seen his mother slice the Sunday roast with it many times.

A pang of sadness, mixed with regret, coursed through him.

He remembered sitting down every Sunday, beside his little sister, eagerly awaiting the most anticipated meal of the week. His mother would place each dinner plate, carefully, ceremoniously. Her face tinged with pride. He swallowed as he realised that she would never again look that way when thinking about him.

The knife faltered as he wondered if there was any way back to those days; his early teenage years when belonging within his family had been enough. The days out, the seaside holidays, the takeaway and film nights.

He swallowed deeply.

He wasn’t that boy any more. Had not been for years. The rage that had seeded within him had been fanned to a roaring inferno.

He knew what he had to do.

His mother’s face planted itself in his mind. The pain he felt was almost physical.

He cried out as he pulled the blade across his wrist.

The action left a scratch that criss-crossed some of the other poor attempts he’d already made. This effort was rewarded with a small bubble of blood at one end of the cotton-thin line. It was progress.

Her face remained in his mind. It was filled with understanding and forgiveness. The way she had looked when he had earned a detention for punching a boy in the school playground. Or the time he had taken another kid’s bike and damaged the front wheel. These were mistakes and he had been forgiven.

This would not be one of those times.

Never before in his eighteen years had he wished to turn back the clock. In the last two days he had wished it on the hour, every hour. The regret was not for himself. He would never marry. He would never bring a girlfriend home to meet his mum. He would never have children. But his regret was for his mother. He took with him her only hope of a grandchild.

In his mind the face of his mother changed and looked puzzled, confused, almost questioning.

The pain of her pain ripped through his heart.

She would question herself. She would wonder what she’d done wrong. If it was her fault.

Tears stung his eyes at the thought.

‘This is all wrong,’ he whispered, as he began to shake his head.

He couldn’t bear the thought of his mother blaming herself. It wasn’t her fault. None of this was her fault. It was his own.

His hand let go of the knife and reached into the top drawer of his bedside cabinet and took out a notepad and pen.

He knew there was no other way for him. Had known it for two days. But his mother did not have to live the rest of her life with guilt due to his choices. He would never forgive himself for what he’d done and, try as she might, she would never forgive him either.

He paused as he remembered the helpless, terrified face that had looked up at him, confused, searching for the reason; the motivation for his actions. It was a question he had suddenly been unable to answer, and it sickened him to his core. Those eyes, oh God, those eyes, full of fear, found the shame in his heart. It was only then he’d realised exactly what he’d become. The blackness of his soul had taken away his breath. He had turned into a monster.

It would not end with him. In truth, it was only just beginning. Death and hatred were coming, and he was too cowardly to stop them.

He placed the note to his mother on top of the pillow and reached once more for the knife.

His grip was firm and his hand was steady as he focussed on the vein in his wrist.

He slashed at the skin with the blade.

This time, he meant it.

‘Bryant, take this left,’ Kim cried, as she heard sirens in the distance.

The brakes screeched as he did a Clarkson around the bend onto a trading estate.

‘I’m pretty sure we were on our way home,’ he grumbled.

Kim ignored her colleague as she swept her gaze left, forward, right and back again, her eyes peeled for any movement between the darkened buildings.

‘Guv, you do know there are other officers on the West Mid—’

‘We were less than a mile away from an armed robbery with injury and all you can think about is your pie and mash?’ she snapped. It was his own fault for keeping his radio on.

‘Fair enough,’ he conceded. An evening meal paled against the vision of an innocent male bleeding profusely from a stab wound to the stomach.

‘I’m willing to bet he’s on here somewhere,’ she said, narrowing her eyes against the darkness.

She already suspected from the description that they were searching for Paul Chater, a nineteen-year-old prolific shoplifter she’d been hauling into the station since he was eleven.

The lad was banned from every shopping centre and high street shop that were members of an intel-based partnership scheme, and his photo had been passed around more than a reality star’s sex tape.

‘Why would he come on to here?’ Bryant asked.

‘Because it’s like a small town,’ she answered. ‘This place has over two hundred units and three miles of road.’

They were less than a quarter of a mile from the shop, and the kid was still riding a crappy old moped with a dodgy exhaust muffler. He would want to be off the main roads as quickly as possible.

‘We could both be driving around here for an hour and not meet,’ she said.

‘So, he probably knows we’re gonna look here?’ Bryant said.

‘Not in an Astra Estate,’ she answered. ‘He’ll be paying more attention to those bloody sirens.’

In recent years, Paul Chater had focussed his shoplifting and theft from small shops with limited or no CCTV. He took his frequent stretches inside as an occupational hazard and a well-earned rest. But the report of a knife was an escalation.

Kim rolled down her window, hoping the tinny sound of his bike would give him away, but the sound of the approaching sirens was doing nothing to help her.

‘Guv, we’re not gonna find—’

‘There he is,’ she cried, pointing through the windscreen.

Bryant put his foot on the accelerator.

‘No, don’t chase him,’ she warned. ‘He’s looking for somewhere to hide. If he drops the bike and goes on foot, we’ll never catch him.’

She tried to think quickly. ‘Carry on to the end of the road, do a right and then a left.’

If Chater had any sense at all, he’d be riding to the far west of the site that backed on to a steep bank leading to the canal towpath, but the way he was heading meant a half mile of straight road first.

As they cut across a hardware store car park and landed on the stretch of road, Chater came into view, aiming right for where she’d thought he would.

‘Catch him up,’ she instructed.

Bryant hit the accelerator again.

Chater looked behind.

‘Faster,’ she barked.

The sound of the sirens told her that squad cars had entered the estate, but she knew they would never catch up with him now.

It was just them.

‘Get alongside him,’ she said, letting down her window fully.

The bank was two hundred metres away.

‘Guv, what are?—’

‘Pull over,’ she screamed once she was level with Chater.

‘Pull over,’ she repeated, shouting into his surprised face.

One hundred and fifty metres.

‘Guv, don’t do anything—’

‘Stop the fucking bike,’ she cried.

One hundred metres until he dropped the moped and ran.

The moped nudged ahead.

‘Get me closer,’ Kim said, breathlessly.

‘Don’t do what I think—’

‘Bryant, I already asked him nicely,’ she said, turning in her seat.

Fifty metres and she was back level with his upper arm.

She hesitated for just a second and then remembered the radio message that had described Mr Singh bleeding back at the shop.

Twenty-five metres.

She grabbed the handle and opened the car door, nudging him in the thigh.

Bryant hit the brakes as the moped was falling to the left away from the car.

She threw open the door and scrambled out. Chater got to his feet and began to run towards the bank.

The sirens were coming at her from all directions as she closed the three metre gap between them.

She launched forward as he reached the foot of the hill.

‘Gotcha,’ she cried, tumbling on top of him. The solid zip of her leather biker jacket dug into her stomach and his back.

He groaned and struggled to get out of her grip.

She turned him over and looked into the face behind the Perspex visor.

‘Okay, you little shit,’ she said, straddling his stomach. ‘What you been up to this time?’

‘Gerroff me, bitch,’ he said, wriggling his hips like Ricky Martin.

She tightened her thighs around his ribs. ‘Where’s the knife, Paul?’

‘Weren’t no knife,’ he protested.

The denial from his lips was quick, but his eyes did not agree.

‘Where is it, Paul?’ she asked, tightening her grip on his wrist.

‘Told yer, weren’t no fucking knife,’ he shouted now that the courage of his conviction had caught up with him. ‘Just wanted some fags, didn’t I?’

Kim felt the anger surge through her at the picture of an innocent man bleeding back at his own shop. His life hanging in the balance because this little scrote didn’t want to pay for smokes.

‘So get a job and buy some,’ she said, tightening her grip as a squad car pulled into the kerb at an angle.

She looked to her colleague who was now standing against the car with his arms crossed. ‘You know, Bryant, I bloody hate people who think the world owes them something.’

‘Shall we take him, Marm?’ asked one of the arriving constables as a second squad car pulled up.

She nodded and raised herself from the ground to her five feet nine height and picked a twig from her spiky black hair. She turned her attention back to the man on the ground. ‘You’ve always been a dick, Paul, but now you’re a dick with a knife and that’s gonna put you away for a long, long time,’ she hissed, handing him over. ‘The knife will be on this estate somewhere, guys,’ she said to the constables.

‘That ay gonna solve all yer problems, pig,’ Chater smirked. ‘There’s plenty more like me out there and they’m coming…’

‘Oh, I know that, but as one supermarket likes to say, Paul: “every little helps”.’

She walked over to her waiting colleague, who was quietly shaking his head. She rubbed the dirt from her hands and smiled. One less scumbag on the streets.

‘Okay, Bryant. Now you can go home to your dinner.’

Doctor A surveyed the row of faces before her and tried not to sigh out loud. Her colleague from Aston University was on his way to Dubai to advise a group of newly appointed police officers on the first stages of excavation.

And she was in the middle of a field in the Black Country with a group of apathetic students wearing the Monday morning expression that she was too professional to show. Oh, where were the eager young minds with spongy brains desperate to soak up new information? That would have made the job allocation easier, she thought. The next request for archaeological consultancy in a warm, sunny climate had better have her name on it.

‘Okay, gathering round,’ she said, waving her hands forward.

‘She means gather,’ offered Timothy, her assistant.

She pursed her lips at him. Yes, she sometimes mangled certain words in the English language but if they hadn’t understood that simple instruction, there was going to be trouble ahead.

While she had been busy spraying the outline, two metres by one metre, the fourteen students had broken away, forming small groups and huddling together, hands deep in pockets, shoulders hunched against the early November seven degree temperature. Although the wind was chilly, it was not biting. She would like to take these youngsters to her home in Macedonia on the Balkan Peninsula where cold air masses travelled from Russia and hung in the valleys, plunging the temperature to minus twenty.

‘Who can name me tools in the forensic archaeologist’s toolbox?’ she asked, opening the bag beside the shovels.

‘Camera,’ said one, yawning.

‘Sketchpad and pencils,’ offered another.

‘Tweezers and swabs,’ said yawner.

‘Torch.’

She nodded as the most obvious responses were called out to her. The enthusiasm was short-lived as their brains needed to change gear to search for more answers.

‘Don’t forgetting we are crime scene,’ she prompted.

‘Tape.’

‘Disposable clothing.’

Doctor A nodded again, and looked down at the rectangle of grass.

‘So, are we ready to begin?’ she asked, reaching for the shovel.

They looked from one to the other as they stepped forward.

‘Da mu se nevidi,’ she whispered under her breath.

Doctor A stole a glance at Timothy, who made a cross-eyed expression at her. He had learned enough Macedonian to know it was her cry of frustration.

‘Is there anything we should be doing first?’ she repeated.

‘Clean your tools,’ called out one student.

‘One would hoping they are clean,’ she said, shortly.

She was beginning to hope that none of these students took the forensic route.

It was time to spell it out a bit, she thought as she began to dig.

‘Normally you would examine the topsoil area. There is no crime here so I shall dig as I explain.’

Timothy stepped forward and began to dig alongside her.

A few people stepped forward at the promise of activity.

‘At ancient sites, relevant layers are generally completely buried. At forensic scenes the existing surface is a relevant layer too.

‘The burial feature opens directly onto the present ground. This meaning that the ground you walking on simply to get to the scene is part of the site and your presence may alter or destroying evidence.’

She paused for any questions. When none came she continued with the lesson plan. ‘Forensic evidence is more subtle. A forensic archaeologist must be sensitive to the presence of such evidence as cut roots, dry leaves, dead vegetation, tool marks, shoe prints, even fingerprints.’

The pile of turf began to grow just outside the white paint border.

‘Artefacts at forensic sites are often perishable and rarely encountered at normal archaeological sites: paper, cloth, tobacco, insect evidence, hair, fingernails, other soft tissues.’

Doctor A looked around at the bored faces as the hole gaped at a foot deep.

She passed the shovel to a brunette to her right and indicated to the man beside her to take the second shovel from Timothy.

‘Dig, please,’ she instructed, and waited until they were throwing down the shovels to dig before speaking again.

‘There is also the possibility of encountering biohazardous or dangerous materials…’ She hesitated. ‘Like a loaded gun.’

The woman student hesitated. Suddenly that word had attracted everyone’s attention.

She nodded towards her audience. ‘Yes, it has happened.’

She walked behind the diggers and motioned for them to pass the shovels along. It was time to warm these kids up.

She laced her fingers behind her back as she continued to walk and talk.

‘Any evidence found must be entered into the proper legal chain of custody. Pass the shovels, please. And all must be accounted for and protected until officially…’

Her words trailed away as she glanced down into the pit.

‘Stop,’ she cried at the top of her voice.

Every single person jumped back, startled.

‘Step away,’ she said, not taking her eyes from the hole.

She moved around to the long edge of the feature and knelt down.

She peered closer and held out her right hand. Like every good assistant, Timothy knew exactly what to do.

A soft brush was placed into her palm.

‘Getting out of my light, people,’ she shouted, without removing her gaze from the object that had caught her attention.

She brushed gently, her heart beating loudly in her chest.

Gasps sounded around her as the smooth, round shape began to emerge. It appeared these students knew something after all.

Doctor A paused to turn and speak to her colleague.

‘Timothy, get everyone away from this area. And then get me the coroner and Detective Inspector Stone.’

Stacey Wood struggled hard to process the scene around her. There was something obscene about the volume of blood that appeared to have reached every hard surface of the tiny box room at the back of the small house. But that wasn’t the only problem. She’d seen blood before. The real issue was the memory that had been pushed to the back of her mind.

Her gaze met Dawson’s over the space that was littered with trainers, football boots, car magazines and tee shirts.

A normal boy’s bedroom ‒ except for the body of the teenage boy that was slumped against the wall, and the bloodstain on the carpet. The metallic smell of blood fought against the aroma of sweaty clothes.

His head had dropped backwards, his open eyes appearing to stare at the blood spatter on the ceiling as though either stargazing or looking in awe at what he’d done. A white scar that ran beneath his left eye was the only interruption to the smooth, youthful skin. One sleeve of his hoody was rolled up to his elbow, displaying the fatal wound. His grey skinny jeans were covered with drying bloodstains.

The kitchen knife had fallen just inches from his right hand.

Stacey tried to keep her breathing even and unaffected as her gaze rested on the knife. She didn’t want Dawson thinking she couldn’t hack being out in the field. And he could smell her weakness a mile off. But that knife was tugging her mind towards somewhere she did not want to go. Not here and not now.

She mentally shook herself and concentrated her thoughts. The mother had found her son and hysterically called for paramedics. A call had been funnelled through to the station, and subsequently a call for the pathologist to attend at the same time. Stacey guessed the boy had been dead for a couple of hours.

The key reason for their attendance was to establish that it was not a murder staged to look like a suicide. A swift agreement between the detective and the pathologist would aid a speedy process in allowing the family to make funeral arrangements.

‘He meant it,’ Keats, the resident pathologist offered. ‘Eventually.’

Stacey knew that. Despite the false attempt scratches running across the wrist, the tear in the skin ran down the arm. The vein had been sliced.

Stacey couldn’t stop her mind wandering beyond the sight before her to the knowledge that the moments prior to death had been painful, emotional, laboured. Bad enough that this youth had felt there was no other alternative than to end his own life, but the hesitation cuts echoed his suffering.

Stacey had no clue what had been torturing this young man but she did know that many teenage problems were not as insurmountable as the person thought they were. Perhaps if he’d been able to share his problems, he would not have felt this was his only course of action. She shuddered and swallowed the rising sickness away.

Keats would continue to process the scene but from her view there was nothing to indicate anyone had been involved in the death of Justin Reynolds. The small room would have shown some signs of a struggle if that had been the case, but the only conflict had been in the young man’s head.

‘You happy to call it, Sergeant?’ Keats asked quietly, glancing at Dawson.

He nodded. ‘I’m satisfied this young—’

Stacey didn’t hear the rest of his words as she stepped out of a room that she could not leave quickly enough.

Kim took a sharp left off the A456, a dual carriageway that separated the West Midlands force with that of West Mercia.

She followed the satnav’s instructions when it told her to turn left onto a dirt track behind a garden centre.

‘Is this thing on drugs?’ she asked, when the electronic voice announced they had reached their destination. Kim had thought the contraption was taking her on a shortcut and that they would eventually rejoin civilisation or at the very least a tarmac road.

Bryant shrugged as the right tyre hit a pothole that bounced them both like a trampoline.

‘Oops,’ she said, as she spotted three police vehicles next to two minibuses on a gravel parking spot by a field gate. Luckily for her, electronic gadgets did not require apologies.

She parked ten feet back, blocking the single-track road.

As they headed towards the gate, a few fragmented groups of students reached the minibuses, talking animatedly.

Thank goodness someone had had the sense to start clearing the scene. She was sure this was a training session these kids would not forget in a hurry.

Both of them flashed their identification at the police officers guarding the entrance gate, even though both constables were known to them.

A part-worn path continued into the field, gouged by farm vehicles entering the space. It continued for approximately fifty metres before disappearing.

The wooded area to their right thinned to expose a flat, grassy field that stretched a quarter of a mile in each direction, bordered by dense green hedges separating it from the crop fields beyond.

Kim spotted the activity at the tip of the trees.

‘Aw, shit, guv. You could have told me it was her.’

Kim smiled. ‘Thought you liked surprises.’

‘You call that a surprise?’ he said, sourly.

Kim shook her head. She knew the scientist was an acquired taste. Her directness did not sit well on everyone’s palate but to Kim the woman was a breath of fresh air. She said what she meant and meant what she said. Not always correctly, but close enough.

Kim watched as Doctor A paced the length of the hole. Her one hand was thrust into her front jeans pocket while the other held the phone to her ear. The left leg of her light blue jeans had broken free from the confines of the Doc Marten boot.

What may once have been a tight ponytail holding up her long ombre hair had now loosened and dropped to the back of her neck.

‘Doctor A,’ Kim said, offering her hand as the woman ended the call.

The nickname had been fashioned by the scientist herself after witnessing too many annihilations of her Macedonian name. Kim wasn’t even sure what it was any more as she had used the shortened version for as long as she could remember.

A brief smile accompanied the handshake as she moved her gaze along.

‘Bryant,’ she said, thrusting her hand forward.

Her colleague had no choice but to take it.

‘She got my name right,’ Bryant mumbled, as the woman turned towards the hole.

‘Where is Keatings?’ she asked, suddenly.

‘Handing over a suicide scene,’ Kim explained. ‘He’ll be here shortly.’

‘Come, come,’ Doctor A said, beckoning them forward to the edge of the pit.

Kim saw immediately the chalky white bone protruding from the soil. Experience told her exactly what she was looking at.

‘A skull?’ she asked.

Doctor A nodded.

Kim stepped back and looked at the hole in the context of the flat land.

‘A foot and a half deep?’ she asked.

‘Approximately, yes. Very shallow.’

Kim stepped forward. ‘Can we?…’

‘No, no, no, no, no,’ Doctor A cried. ‘We cannot rush. We must have Keatings and my team firstly and foremost. We do not know condition or circumstance before you start tramping the scene.’

Kim understood. At this point there was no way of knowing how long the skull had been in there. Doctor A’s job was to preserve the evidence and remove the skull as carefully as possible.

Like most forensic archaeologists, Doctor A held a PhD in Anthropology and understood how to read any clues left in the bones.

She would need to ascertain firstly that the bones were human. Kim had seen enough skulls to hold no doubt about that.

She would then attempt to identify biological characteristics: i.e. age, sex and race. Kim already knew that establishing the time since death was beyond problematic when dealing with bones without tissue. The rate of decomposition of the flesh, factoring in both the biological and climate conditions, could have at least landed them in the correct ballpark. It was unlikely that entomology would assist either. Judging by the cleanliness of the bone, she could see the insects had long since left the party.

Most importantly for the investigation, Doctor A’s knowledge would hopefully assist them to identify a cause and manner of death.

Kim knew there were four manners of death: natural, accidental, suicidal, and homicidal.

As yet Kim had no clue what they were looking at, but she knew one thing: this poor soul had not buried themselves.

‘Aww… double shit,’ Bryant said, causing her to turn.

A horde was heading along the treeline towards them. Most of them she was expecting. One she was not. She groaned.

‘Thank you for keeping my crime scene warm but I’m here now,’ said Detective Inspector Travis, her arch nemesis from West Mercia Police.

Never, since she had made DI had he ever referred to her by rank.

She turned to face him, fully, and returned the favour.

‘Tom, by my count, this is the third time you’ve intruded on a crime scene of mine and walked away empty-handed.’

‘I make. . .