Ruthless a Gripping and Gritty Crime Thriller Read online

  RUTHLESS

  A gripping and gritty crime thriller

  Charlie Gallagher

  First published 2018

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this.

  ©Charlie Gallagher

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  THERE IS A GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH AND POLICE SLANG IN THE BACK OF THIS BOOK FOR US READERS.

  Author’s Note

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  CHARLIE GALLAGHER’S LANGTHORNE SERIES

  FROM CHARLIE GALLAGHER

  VOCABULARY

  FREE KINDLE BOOKS

  Dedicated to and inspired by Michael Dodd, who had this dream first.

  Author’s Note

  I am inspired by what I do and see in my day job as a front-line police detective, though my books are entirely fictional. I am aware that the police officers in my novels are not always shown positively. They are human and they make mistakes. This is sometimes the case in real life too, but the vast majority of officers are honest and do a good job in trying circumstances. From what I see on a daily basis, the men and women who wear the uniform are among the very finest, and I am proud to be part of one of the best police forces in the world.

  Charlie Gallagher

  Chapter 1

  The sun beat against the curtains so they were framed in a vivid outline of fiery white. The air hung hot and heavy. William Dryden moved to sit up. He was lying on his side, his left arm numb where it had been crushed, unmoving under his weight. The blood rushed back instantly, a pleasant feeling at first, then like hot little pinpricks. William shook his arm to get the blood flowing. He yawned, his eyes still felt heavy. He wasn’t sleeping well at all these days, not since he had abandoned his bedroom for the sofa. He had had no choice: the bed frame had finally given up the ghost — it was still in a heap where it had fallen. He and Janey had ended up in a heap on the floor too, shaken awake. Now the nights meant a sofa each where they would lie fully clothed, no routine, no move to go to bed, just watching their dusty television set until overcome by tiredness. William had fallen asleep first last night, he reckoned. He remembered Janey talking at him. He didn’t think he had answered.

  Janey lay on the sofa opposite. She was turned away, her legs pulled up so that her knees dug into the back cushion of the sofa, her matted brown hair falling down her back. She had blonde ends, it had all been blonde once. She had dyed it a straw-like tone but her natural colour had gradually reasserted itself and it had grown long, too. She talked about getting it cut, about doing it herself maybe. William had offered but she had just laughed at him.

  The feeling in his arm had returned. He planted his feet firmly on the floor and pushed his right hand down into the arm of the sofa. Getting up was never without pain, but the first one of the day was always the worst. He had suffered with abscesses on his thigh on and off for years, longer than he could remember. He’d been putting off visiting the doctor too. He’d heard the official advice often enough and he was well aware of the risks of being an intravenous drug user: unclean needles, raw injection sites and a less than sterile environment overall. Both legs were causing him grief but the right was the worst. It usually got a little better through the day as he loosened up, but he was never without discomfort. He knew he should treat it with antibiotics, a strong course right to the end. He had been told before that it would make all the difference. One day he would do it, complete a course of prescribed drugs. But he reckoned the damage was done. Fifteen years of injecting had taken its toll.

  He got to his feet and stood in an arrow of sunlight that penetrated the room where the curtains had fallen apart in the middle. He winced at the light and turned into the kitchen.

  Two coffees. Three sugars for Janey. She had one usually, but the first one was always three. He filled two cups. Both were stained brown in a ringed pattern that got lighter in shade the closer it got to the top. He carried the cups back to Janey. She hadn’t moved.

  ‘Janey.’ His throat was dry and his voice didn’t sound like his own. Still no movement. He knew that she could be a heavy sleeper, but . . .

  ‘Janey, coffee. JANEY!’ William grunted his frustration. His legs hurt as he bent to set the mugs down on the threadbare carpet. He pulled at her hip and she rolled towards him, her right arm falling as she did so. Her eyes were open, her lips a dark blue, her skin washed out.

  ‘Janey!’ William’s hand shot out to her cheek. It was cold to the touch. He tapped her cheek with his palm, progressively harder. ‘Janey! Janey, don’t you ignore me now, Janey. We’ve got a day planned!’

  Janey didn’t move. William stepped away. He scanned the room, trying to quell the panic that was rising from the pit of his stomach. Janey’s phone lay on the table behind him. He stumbled towards it, his legs still stiff and sore. The coffee cups were kicked over, the fluids trampled into the carpet.

  The ambulance took twenty-five minutes to arrive. William spent every one of them sat back on his sofa, his hands covering his face, his body rocking slowly back and forth. He knew a bit of what to do; he knew CPR. But he also knew that she was gone. He just knew. And there was nothing anyone could do to bring her back.

  Five minutes behind the ambulance came the police. Two coppers: the first a short, bald man who kept his hands tucked into his black stab vest and a woman who tried to talk to him, told him how sorry she was. She was taller than the other copper, she had a slim but awkward build and big brown eyes. She asked some questions about who he was, about who Janey was. Wrote some notes in her pad.

  William made it back to his sofa. One of the paramedics stood up. They had pulled Janey onto the floor in front of him. There were white wrappers strewn around her and she had plastic tubes in her nostrils. A machine with lights beeped beside her head. The paramedic shook his head at the policeman. He sat down next to William and took off his hat.

  ‘William, I’m sorry, mate. They’ve done all they can for Jane, but there’s nothing more they can do.’

  ‘Janey.’

  ‘Sorry, Janey. Is there someone you can call, William? Family or friends who could come round and keep you company for a while?’

  ‘No.’ William exhaled in a sort of laugh. It was unbelievable, the realisation of it all starting to sink in. He had no family, no friends and now no Janey. He had nothing left.

  ‘Are you going to be
okay? We’ll probably be here for a little while longer, William, but we will have to leave. Are you going to be okay when we do?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay. Listen, William . . . In circumstances like this the duty detective sergeant will always come out to the scene. He’ll just want to make sure there’s nothing been missed here and I’ve no doubt he’ll want to speak to you, okay?’

  ‘Yeah.’ William stared forward focusing on nothing. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t see past Janey lying on the floor in front of him. But he couldn’t leave her. She was still face up, her eyes to the ceiling, her mouth lolling open from where the paramedics had put a tube in. Her hands by her side, her legs out straight. They’d cut off her jumper and T-shirt so she was left in a bra that had faded to a tired beige. Her jeans had been unbuttoned and pulled below her bum showing her black knickers. He wanted to cover her, to dress her, to make her look more presentable. She had been a proud woman once and this wasn’t how she would have wanted to go. But he couldn’t move.

  ‘Can you cover her?’ He turned to the police officer who was fiddling with his phone. He stopped what he was doing.

  ‘Cover her?’

  ‘Cover her up. Make her decent. She wouldn’t want to just be laying there like that.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ The officer spoke with the paramedics, they were packing their bags. They produced a white blanket. It covered her top half and down to her knees. It had property of the NHS stitched into the material. William found himself fixing on the words, reading them over and over. The suited detective sergeant arrived. He must have been just round the corner, waiting for Janey to be confirmed dead.

  ‘You must be William Dryden,’ the sergeant said. He was short and squat, and his hair was jet black and untidy. He was well spoken and he instantly looked uncomfortable. Maybe it was the surroundings. The cramped and dirty bungalow, the thick smell of squalor worsened by the intense heat. The sergeant’s face flared red and he scratched almost constantly at dry-looking skin on his neck.

  ‘Yeah.’ William was still sat on the sofa.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Anthony Keats. It’s our policy that a detective sergeant will always attend this type of incident. I’m sure you just want us all to leave you alone, but I promise you I won’t take up much of your time.’

  ‘This type of incident?’ William repeated back.

  The sergeant looked even more uncomfortable. ‘Yes. It’s what we would refer to as an unexpected death. We need to make sure we have all the details for the coroner before we leave. I have a colleague who will take a statement from you. We will be asking about how you found Jane this morning.’

  ‘It’s Janey.’

  ‘Janey, my apologies. We will be asking about how you found Janey and any build up to that moment. We will also ask for a little bit of background, your relationship to Janey, her lifestyle, etc.’

  ‘What do you mean lifestyle?’

  ‘Well, at this time, Mr Dryden, we suspect Janey passed after injecting heroin. Is she addicted to heroin?’

  ‘How can you tell that? There are tests that are done afterwards, right? Where you can tell exactly what happened.’

  ‘Yes, and those will be done. There will be a full post-mortem. Janey still has a needle in her thigh, William. She’s known to us for bits and bobs — shoplifting mainly — and the last time Janey was in custody she said she was trying to fund a heroin habit. Said she was on four bags a day. Does that sound about right?’

  Actually it was more like six these days, William thought, but they didn’t need to know that . . . no one did. ‘She uses, yeah.’

  ‘Do you take it with her?’

  ‘No. I used to. I’ve been clean for nearly six months. We were working on getting Janey off, but with her — you know . . .’ William took a second; he suddenly felt emotional. He should have done more. He’d told her something like this was going to happen. He’d told her over and over . . . you never see an old gear head. They were both too old for this. Janey was slightly older, facing up to turning forty. Neither of them wanted her to meet the milestone with heroin in her veins.

  ‘I know it’s hard to get off it—’

  ‘You don’t!’ William was suddenly angry. ‘You don’t know how it gets you. With Janey it was bad. She was so deep in, there was no reaching down to her. I tried. You have to know that I tried.’

  ‘I’m sure you did. I’m sure she knew that, too.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter what she knew now.’

  ‘Is there anymore in the house?’

  ‘Anymore heroin? No. She lived hand to mouth, Sergeant. Always has. If she has it, she has to stick it inside her. She’s got that sort of personality, I guess. Me, I used to have times I’d stick to — a schedule, like. I could stock up for days at a time. Not Janey.’

  ‘Where did she get it from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Of course he did. But you don’t go telling the police stuff like that.

  ‘You’re sure you don’t know, William? I’d hate for there to be a bad batch out there and for more people to go the same way as Janey.’

  ‘I don’t know. She had her sources but I’ve been out of all that too long. I didn’t get involved. When you’re a recovering addict the last thing you want to be doing is getting involved with the dealers.’

  The undertakers arrived. They shuffled into the tight living room. You could tell them a mile off with their cheap, easy-clean black suits and shiny black ties. They stood silently in the background, shoulder-to-shoulder with their arms held to the front, like doormen to the afterlife. The sergeant had seen them too.

  ‘These gents are from the undertakers. My CSI colleague has finished her work so Janey can be taken away. She will be taken to the William Harvey hospital, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘The post-mortem may mean a small delay in releasing Janey’s body. We will be in touch when that happens so you can start making arrangements. The two gentlemen here will give you some details as regards funerals and things. I’ll leave my contact details too, William, and then we’ll be out of your way. Any questions for me at this point?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, great. My colleague will take that statement from you now. Did you want to stay sitting here or is there somewhere else to sit? Just while these men do their work.’

  ‘I’d like to stay here. I can do the statement after. I just want to make sure she’s treated right. I know what people will think of her — some skag-head overdose. Janey wasn’t like that — no matter what it looks like.’

  The sergeant smiled. It didn’t look convincing but he made the effort at least. ‘I’m sorry, William. I know this is a terrible time for you and all these people are here to make it as painless as possible. We’ll leave you for a few minutes until Janey is taken away and then my colleague will write some words, okay?’

  Janey was wrapped in a white bag first. It reminded William of the material you got around electrical goods. It was slightly padded and with a zip up the centre that ran from head to toe. Next came a black bag; they put her in feet first. The men grunted with the exertion, despite trying desperately not to. All the while William never moved more than a few feet away. Both undertakers sweated in their jackets. The taller of the two men had a droplet of sweat on his forehead as he straightened his back. He couldn’t wipe it away while he held onto the stretcher. They sidled past and out through the front door. Almost immediately the female officer started speaking at William again. He did his best to engage with what she was saying, but he wasn’t interested and he soon got the impression that she wasn’t either. He signed in three places without checking the words, the image of Janey in that body bag still prominent in his mind.

  And then they were gone. The paramedics, the coppers, the fidgeting sergeant. William stood at his window. Through the gap in his hedge, he watched the undertakers close the back doors of a polished black van. They took their seats in the front and the van moved off too.

&
nbsp; Everything was gone.

  Chapter 2

  The car lay on its side, its black under-body turned towards Sergeant Jamie Lee’s police car on his arrival just after 11 p.m. It had been hard to pick out in the darkness as he’d pulled his car to a sudden stop. He stepped out to survey the scene. The vivid blue of the car’s strobe lights sliced up the gloom. A light breeze concealed the soaking drizzle. He made his way over quickly; he’d angled his own car so as to light up the scene as best he could. He had a hand-held torch strapped to his stab vest and pointed it into the overturned vehicle. There was a clear hole in the windscreen, in front of where a driver would have sat. The passenger window was lying against the road. A female form was half in, half out of it. Her head pressed against the pillar in front of the passenger door, her left arm crushed under the frame so that the hand reached forwards at an unnatural angle. The fingers were dark blue, almost black, the steel of the car providing an effective tourniquet. There was no movement. Her long brown hair had fallen over her face so he couldn’t see her eyes. He didn’t need to. He already knew they would be lifeless.

  ‘Control from Yankee Zero.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Control, I am on scene at the RTC on Alkham Valley Road. There is one female casualty and likely to be another.’ The sergeant turned his torch away from the car and in the general direction of where the driver might have been propelled. Sure enough, he saw the heel of a shoe sticking up from the long grass of the verge more than twenty metres away. He broke into a jog.

  ‘Received, Yankee Zero. Is the casualty conscious and breathing?’

  Jamie made it to the figure. It was a man, he was lying face down. Jamie rolled him onto his back. He could immediately see a severe head wound, a split that ran from the middle of the forehead up into hair that was slick with blood; it was wide enough for him to see the brilliant white of the skull. The eyes were shut; there was no breathing. James fumbled for a pulse at the neck. Nothing.