Nobody's Child

Book 3: Detectives King and Lane

by Victoria Jenkins

Genres: Mystery; Police Procedurals; Thrillers; Crime Fiction; Suspense

Synopsis

‘Had my brain rattling in my head!… genius… Sometimes my mouth fell open and a few OMG’s escaped… I loved it!’ B for Bookreview, 5 stars On a damp October day, a body is found in an abandoned hospital, too burnt to be identified, but Detective Alex King knows that every victim is someone’s daughter or son. Pushing aside her own troubles, Alex puts everything into finding the killer, but when someone else is found dead, she begins to suspect that the body in the hospital was just the first of many. Just as Alex uncovers a heartbreaking link between the victims, she finds her own safety under threat. Is this a figure from her past hell-bent on revenge, or could the murderer be even nearer than she thinks? Alex is running out of time. Can she catch the killer before they take another life, or will they get to her first? A completely unputdownable detective thriller that will keep you up all night. Readers of Robert Bryndza, Karin Slaughter and Angela Marsons will love this. What readers are saying about Nobody’s Child : ‘Bam! Straight out of the starting gate this had me totally hooked… Fast paced all the way through, hit after hit of tension, excitement and horror… I don’t hesitate in giving this 5 stars, it had me captivated and on the edge-of-my-seat.’ Bonnie’s Book Talk ‘ Cor! Talk about a gripping crime story! WOO! What a corker!… had me on the edge-of-my-seat… left me utterly reeling!… That ending nearly broke me… insanely compelling and addictive.’ Novel Deelights, 5 stars ‘I loved the twists and turns in this book and the different story lines playing out at the same time which kept up the interest. I loved that the chapters were short which kept me saying “just one more” way into the night! A great read!’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘The legend at the top of the book says unputdownable, so did it live up to the gumph? Oh yes. What a great story.’ Nigel Adams Bookworm, 5 stars ‘I was hooked from page one!!... It's a race to solve… plenty of twists!!!... Can't wait for the next one!! Can't recommend it highly enough. ’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘A flawless thriller which will have you hanging off every page, how do you do it Victoria?… it’s an absolute must to read.’ Sweet Little Book Blog, 5 stars ‘WOW!... another brilliant investigation from Alex, Chloe and the team. I hope this series continues for a long time to come.’ Have Books Will Read, 5 stars ‘I found myself getting more and more hooked into the storyline and by the end I seriously could not put it down!... The twists and turns were fantastic and kept the suspense building right through to the end.’ Stardust Book Reviews ‘ A rollercoaster ride of danger and twists as the truth is uncovered… thrilling and gripping crime thriller… plenty of twists and suspense to keep the reader turning pages.’ Dash Fan Book Reviews ‘Thrilling, gripping and will have the reader totally hooked! I loved it. An unexpected outcome! A real page-turner.’ Between the Pages Book Club ‘Wow! Wow! Wow! The book was off the hook! There were so many stories going on in here with characters and crime all over the place. I was like WTF is going on?… And the jaw dropping ending will have you going "No Way!!"’ Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars ‘What a fast-paced story. Boy did I get the chills more than once… This book was incredible. Simply said. I could not put it down…I read the first 61% in less than a couple hours, and it took no time to finish the rest of the book.’ Robin Loves Reading, 5 stars

Release date: June 19, 2018

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 266

Sample

‘It’s looking lovely in here.’

Alex sat on the sofa in Chloe’s living room drinking a cup of tea. The last time she had been over to the house had been about six weeks earlier, when Chloe had still been in the process of moving in. Chloe hadn’t had many material possessions, so moving from Alex’s house into her own rented home had been fairly straightforward and hassle-free. The emotional impact of moving was something both women knew might prove a little trickier to manage. Chloe hadn’t lived alone since the attack earlier that year and she was still having nightmares from her ordeal, but she had known she couldn’t rely on Alex forever.

‘Thanks. I was quite lucky, really – the place didn’t need much doing.’

Alex glanced at the windowsill, where a framed photograph of Chloe and her boyfriend Scott stood. The photo had been taken sometime during the summer; Chloe was wearing a strappy dress and Scott was looking at her as though she was the only person in the world. No one had ever looked at Alex in that way, or if they had, it had happened too long ago for her to be able to recall.

‘How long before he moves in, then?’ she asked with a smile.

Chloe rolled her eyes. ‘Bit soon for that. I don’t think he could cope with some of my bad habits. You can warn him if the time ever comes.’

‘Must be nice to have your own space back.’

‘Yeah, definitely.’ Chloe shot Alex a look, embarrassed. ‘I didn’t mean …’

Alex smiled. She knew what Chloe meant. The young detective constable had worked and lived with her for the previous eight months, but Alex took no offence at her appreciating her own space back. Chloe was twenty-seven; she needed her independence. Alex had thought she would feel the same, yet Chloe’s moving out had only served to highlight an emptiness that she feared she would never be able to fill alone.

‘Handy for work, too.’

Chloe was living now only five minutes from the police station, an easy walk into work. The terraced house overlooked the river and stood in an area far more built up than the flat in which she had previously lived before moving in with Alex. It seemed she had made the decision to surround herself with life, and placing herself near the safety of the station seemed no coincidence either.

‘Yeah, I have wondered about that, though. Bit too easy, maybe.’

Alex finished her tea and stood. ‘You’re still welcome to come over whenever you want, you know that, don’t you? I’m already missing your veggie lasagne.’

‘Charming,’ Chloe said, taking the empty mug from her. ‘You just miss me for my cooking.’

Alex shrugged. ‘At least I’m honest.’

‘I’ll bring some food parcels to the station for you.’

Alex left Chloe’s house and drove home to her own. It was already dark, the nights now drawing in early, and only the string of headlights that ran along the A470 gave away the fact that it was still rush hour and not the depths of night-time. Less than fifteen minutes later, she pulled up outside her house and cut the engine. She lived in the imposing semi that had once been her marital home, and it seemed bigger now she lived there alone once again. In the first couple of months on her own, she had lost count of the number of times she’d felt this way upon returning to the place: not wanting to go inside; dreading the long hours that stretched between night and morning, dragging her along amid their quietness.

She took her bag from the passenger seat beside her and got out of the car, slinging it over her shoulder. Chloe had had the right idea, she thought. Leaving everything behind and starting again seemed an increasingly appealing option. She wondered whether she might be able to do the same. Would she be brave enough? She didn’t need all this space to herself, and besides, there were too many ghosts in this place. Even from the pavement she could almost feel them waiting there, watching her. If she left, would they follow?

Pushing her bag further onto her shoulder, she fumbled with her keys as she tried to find the one for the front door. Before making her way up the steps, she could already feel something was wrong. An unsettling sense of unease fell over her and she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone had invaded her private space. The feeling was quickly justified. Streaked across the front door, in lurid red letters that had run in bloody tears like something from a horror film, was the word ‘WHORE’, spray-painted in angry capitals that seemed to scream at her.

She stopped on the path, halted by the assault on her home. She turned to look behind her, as though the person responsible might still be there, then hurried back down the steps and looked up and down the street. She knew doing so was pointless – whoever had done this was now long gone – but the wave of unease that had swelled in her chest at the sight of the graffiti made her feel in that moment that she was no longer alone, that someone might still be there, waiting to witness her reaction. The irony of her thoughts struck her: hadn’t she just been lamenting her recent isolation?

She returned to the house and went inside. She turned on the hallway light before closing the front door and double-checking the lock was firmly fixed in place behind her. She hadn’t wanted to be alone, yet the thought of someone else being inside the house with her now filled her with an unsettling doubt.

Be careful what you wish for, she thought.

Mahira Hassan muted the television when she heard a noise at the front door. It was late – much later than she had planned to stay up that night – but her sons’ non-appearance by 11 p.m. had triggered a familiar anxiety that she was unable to rid herself of. Late nights inevitably meant trouble, at least where her oldest son Syed was concerned.

She stood from the sofa at the sound of stumbling in the hallway. One of the boys slammed the door shut behind him and Mahira hoped they hadn’t woken Faadi, who was upstairs in bed. Padding across the living room in a pair of slippers, she went to the doorway and watched her sons as they removed their shoes in the hallway, neither of them noticing her standing there. Syed shoved Jameel, laughing unreservedly as his brother fell against the radiator.

‘You’ll wake Faadi.’

Syed turned, surprised to see his mother still up so late. ‘Very sorry, Mother.’

There was no apology in the words and Mahira tried to ignore the sarcasm with which they were spoken. Behind Syed, Jameel straightened himself, still fighting to remove the shoe from his right foot. When he turned to look at her, he made no attempt to hide the bruising that patterned his left eye, angry and swollen.

‘What’s happened now?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It doesn’t look like nothing.’

Syed sighed and stepped past his mother, heading into the living room. He scanned the room for the remote control before unmuting the television and sinking back into the sofa, apparently without a care in the world.

‘Jameel?’

‘It was nothing,’ he repeated with a shrug. ‘No big deal.’

‘Let me take a look at it at least.’

Reluctantly Jameel followed his mother through to the kitchen. He sat at the table while she searched the freezer for a bag of peas, wrapping it in a clean tea towel and handing it to him. ‘It’ll take down the swelling.’

He pressed the bag to his face, but it wasn’t enough to conceal his reddened, bloodshot eyes or the watery glaze that was fixed upon them. Mahira had seen those dilated pupils before; knew all too well what they meant.

‘Are you going to tell me what happened now?’

Jameel ran his free hand across his closely shaved head. His mother hated this look on him. It made him appear to be someone she knew he wasn’t, not really.

‘It was just some idiot.’

‘Who?’

‘You wouldn’t know him.’

‘I might.’

With a sigh, Jameel moved his hand from his face and put the bag of peas down on the table. ‘Gavin Jones. They call him Spider.’

Mahira knew him: he used the shop fairly regularly, mainly for cans and cigarettes. He had a tattoo of a spider’s web that circled his elbow. He had never given her any problems. ‘Are you going to report it?’

Jameel shook his head. ‘Don’t make a big deal about it.’

‘If he did this to you, then you need to report it.’

It occurred to Mahira that Jameel’s reluctance to report the incident to police was perhaps a suggestion that Gavin Jones wasn’t entirely to blame for whatever had happened that evening.

‘Fights don’t start themselves,’ she said.

‘Bloody hell.’ With a scrape that echoed around the kitchen, Jameel pushed his chair back and stood. ‘He said something, all right?’

‘Said what?’

‘Something racist.’

‘Okay. What did he say?’

‘I don’t know, Syed heard him. Now just leave it, will you?’

She watched him stride to the living room, wondering when her middle son had become so much like his older brother. It was unfair of her, she thought; he had a way to go before he really became like Syed. How long would it be, though, before the gradual changes in his attitude and behaviour amounted to the whole: a new, different son to the one she had known these past nineteen years?

Jameel had always looked up to Syed, always wanting to be just like him. For his own sake, and for all their sakes, Mahira hoped it wasn’t going to happen.

‘Jesus Christ.’ DC Chloe Lane put a hand to her mouth: an ineffectual attempt to hide her reaction to the horror that awaited them in one of the former hospital wards. It hardly resembled a person. What had once been human was now reduced to a charred and blackened mess of rags and barely identifiable remains. The scene-of-crime officers were going to have their work cut out for them, as were the fire-scene investigators who were on their way.

‘What was he doing up here?’ Alex wondered, thinking aloud.

The room was bleaker than the bulk of black night sky that stretched beyond the building, the fire having spread rapidly. Fire crew had responded quickly to the 999 call that had been made, with the station being just a few streets away. Alex hoped this would mean that evidence had been preserved. Lifting forensic evidence from fire scenes was always a laborious process, with a myriad of complications. Those complications would be passed on to the incident room, where they would be felt by the rest of the team.

She leaned closer to what remained of the body, her capacity for the brutalities of murder having broadened during her years as a detective. Each time she thought she had seen it all, someone else proved that evil knew no boundaries.

‘How could anyone do this to someone?’ Chloe said quietly.

Alex left the question unanswered. Chloe had seen enough evil in her life to know that sometimes there was no explanation for it, no matter how much they might seek one. In many ways, the senselessness was the most difficult thing to accept.

The abandoned hospital was in Llwynypia, just a few streets from the main road that linked Tonypandy with the smaller villages that stood between it and the top of the Rhondda valleys. Despite its central location, the trees and shrubs that lined its boundaries kept the derelict buildings fairly secluded. This particular room – still bearing evidence of its former use as a ward – was located at the back of the main hospital building, used now as little more than a brick canvas for spray-painted names and lewd graffitied drawings.

Despite the ravages of the fire, the remnants of messages sprayed and scrawled upon the peeling paintwork could still be seen on the far wall. Alex wondered for a moment whether whoever had been responsible for this person’s death had been brazen enough to leave behind a signature. Whatever else they might find here, this was going to prove to be no accident.

Her thoughts roamed for a moment back to her own front door. She hadn’t mentioned the graffiti to Chloe. What was the point? How many people had thrown verbal slurs and insults at her during the duration of her career, and much worse besides? The call from the station about the fire had come in not long after she had arrived home, so she hadn’t yet had time to speak to any of her neighbours. She doubted anyone would have seen anything. Her front door was pretty secluded from the street and it was nearing the end of October, already dark by 5.30.

Returning her focus to the scene, Alex took in the details of what lay before her. A pile of burned wooden planks and an array of charred debris covered the body, forming a human bonfire. The scene was gruesome and macabre, like something from a horror film. Its structure had held surprisingly well against the force of the flames that had consumed it.

‘What’s that?’ She gestured to the doorway through which they had entered the scene. By the wall, at the edge of the fire’s reach, there was a single trainer. She picked her way through the debris and lifted the shoe with a gloved hand. It was a brand she recognised from years back and wouldn’t have thought was still in production. The single shoe looked battered and worn, as though the owner had been wearing it all these years.

‘Remember these?’ she asked, nodding at the trainer.

Chloe shook her head. Alex had thought it unlikely; she hadn’t seen a pair of trainers of this make since she was a teenager, before Chloe had even been thought of. If the shoe belonged to the victim then it was likely this wasn’t a young person, although at that moment it was impossible to tell anything for sure. She had made the assumption that it was a man, though even that wasn’t certain.

There were three scene-of-crime officers in the room, all kitted out in protective white overalls. They roamed the room like ghosts, their silence only adding to the eeriness of the place. Alex gave one of them the trainer and it was placed into a clear plastic bag. She and Chloe moved aside, giving the SOCOs space to work closer to the victim.

‘Know how long this place has been left derelict?’ Chloe asked.

‘Ex-husband’s niece was born here. How old would she be now … twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? It closed not long after that.’

‘You heard from him at all recently?’

‘No, and he’d better keep it that way.’

A near reunion with her ex-husband almost a year earlier had led to disaster, leaving Alex suspecting she might be better off single for the rest of her life. Most days, the prospect didn’t seem too bad, but the attack on her home had made living alone less appealing.

They went back out into the corridor. It was a mess: loose wiring hanging in a tangled web from the ceiling, broken plastic panelling lying in sharp shards underfoot; an abandoned trolley still laden with medical paraphernalia resting beside an open doorway into what had once been another ward, sitting there as though waiting for the ghost of a nurse to retrieve it.

‘Place gives me the creeps,’ Chloe said.

‘Fascinating, though, don’t you think? As though time’s just stopped here.’

Chloe pulled a face. ‘If you say so.’ There was a noise at the end of the corridor that made her start.

‘That’ll be the fire-scene investigators.’ Alex picked her way across the debris to meet the men who had entered the corridor, all dressed in full protective clothing and armed with an expansive collection of equipment.

‘Detective Inspector King. This is Detective Constable Chloe Lane.’

One of the men introduced himself in reply and shook the hand Alex offered him. ‘Suspected arson?’

Alex nodded. ‘One victim, gender as yet unknown.’

‘It’s not the first fire we’ve had up here,’ the man told her. ‘I don’t know how many times we’ve said this place needs to be pulled down. It’s become a magnet for trouble.’

Alex led the investigators through to the room where the body lay, then turned her attention back to Chloe. ‘We need to find out if there are any cameras on any of the streets nearby,’ she said. ‘The call came in from a telephone box about two minutes from here – perhaps there’s CCTV somewhere. Let’s do a door-to-door, speak to the residents in the nearest houses. It’s a long shot, but if there’s regular trouble up here perhaps someone’s kept enough of an eye out to have seen something suspicious.’

‘I still don’t get why anyone would choose to come into this place.’

‘Curiosity, I suppose. Some people love derelict places.’ She watched for a moment as the fire-scene investigators set about their work. Until the pathologist arrived, they would have no details regarding their victim. ‘The call that came in was anonymous,’ she continued, thinking aloud. Something wasn’t sitting right with her. The fire hadn’t had time to spread beyond this room, meaning that whoever had placed that call had done so soon after the blaze had been started.

‘Think whoever it was might know more?’ Chloe asked.

‘They certainly knew about the fire quickly enough. And why else would you withhold your name? Whoever it was, they ended the call as quickly as they’d made it.’

One of the SOCOs had crouched beside the burned body and was using a gloved hand to retrieve something from amid the charred remains. Alex understood Chloe’s reaction to the place: there was an eerie, haunting atmosphere that was static in the air around them. It seemed an ironic place to die: a building where healing had happened; a place where lives had begun and been saved. It was almost impossible to imagine it now as it might have been then, clean and sterile, bustling with life.

‘DI King.’

Alex turned at her name. The SOCO was holding something up with a gloved hand, beckoning her to take a closer look.

‘Looks like part of a sleeping bag,’ he said.

Alex looked again at the remains that lay beneath the stack of blackened debris. Had the victim been sleeping rough in the hospital building? The circumstances of this person’s death now seemed all the more tragic. Had they sought shelter here; been killed in the place they’d considered the closest thing to a home?

Who had ended a life so brutally and callously here, and why had they done it?

Mahira Hassan couldn’t sleep. She lay in bed – the right-hand side of the mattress always hers – unable to drift off as she tried to fight back the barrage of thoughts that thundered through her brain. There was usually the incessant rumble of her husband’s snoring in the bed beside her, and his being away with work again should have meant a much-needed night of uninterrupted peace. For twenty-six years Mahira had been able to count on her fingers the number of nights she had spent without her husband sleeping by her side, but the last year had seen him away with work more often. Rather than missing him, she more often than not these days found herself glad of the break.

She wondered whether he was asleep in his hotel room, imagining that he would be. Youssef always slept soundly. How could he sleep so deeply, she wondered, knowing everything that had happened? How would he react to the news of what had happened again that evening?

She heard a noise on the landing; the soft padding of feet descending the staircase. Slipping from beneath the duvet, she slid her bare feet into the slippers that waited at the bedside and reached for the dressing gown draped over a chair. Edging around the bed, she left the room and headed downstairs.

In the kitchen, Syed was standing at the fridge, illuminated in the darkness by its strip light. He was wearing a dressing gown and his bare feet were exposed, showing a shock of thick dar. . .