Bad Blood
BAD BLOOD
DC BROCKWELL
Copyright © 2020 DC Brockwell
The right of DC Brockwell to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2020 by Bloodhound Books
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
www.bloodhoundbooks.com
Print ISBN 978-1-913419-95-0
CONTENTS
Love crime, thriller and mystery books?
Also by DC Brockwell
Day 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Day 2
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Day 4
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Day 7
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Day 8
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Day 11
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Day 12
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Day 14
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Day 15
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Day 16
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Day 1
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
A note from the publisher
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ALSO BY DC BROCKWELL
THE MET MURDER INVESTIGATIONS
No Way Out
Bird of Prey
DAY 1
FRIDAY, MAY 18TH
1
Myles Jackman felt tugging at his feet. More than that, he felt the cold beneath him. When he tried to move his hands, they wouldn’t move. A cold breeze blew over him; it was then he realised he was naked. Naked and outside.
There was another tug at his feet, followed by a tug at his hands. He was afraid to open his eyes. He felt movement in his bowels. Fear. He wasn’t alone. He didn’t want to see who was with him, who was tugging at his feet and hands.
“Wake up, you piece of shit!”
He felt the slap that snapped his face sideways. It stung.
Why was he here? The last thing he remembered was opening his car door in the underground car park… Oh, wait! Then he’d felt a hand over his mouth.
Fingers pried his eyes open.
They adjusted to their new stimuli. Glaring down at him was a set of eyes; it was only eyes because the rest was Shadow, towering over him. Although he was lying on the ground, Myles could tell how big Shadow was; tall and butch, the kind of person he’d steer clear of. “Please, what are you doing?”
Myles looked around him, desperately searching for a reason why he was here. To his left was a storefront. He could make out a name: Whyte and Sons. He was in a hardware store car park! When he looked to his right, he could see the white lines of parking bays.
Shadow didn’t answer him; instead, tugged at his feet. Pulling his head up, Myles looked down his body. His hands were tied together with rope. The rope from his hands was in turn tied to the rope binding his feet. “What are you doing? Why are you doing this to me?” His voice sounded desperate, even to him. “Please, I’ll do anything you want, just let me go.”
He panicked when he saw Shadow tying the rope to the bumper of a pickup truck. “No! Please, you can’t do this. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Myles recoiled when Shadow stopped tying the rope, and stood still – eerily still – before turning around and marching back towards him. Shadow loomed over him and glared down, the eyes black pits of pure hatred. “What?” Myles’ voice was placatory. “Tell me what I’ve done, and I’ll stop doing it, please.”
Shadow reached into a pocket and pulled out a photograph. Crouching and shoving it under Myles’ nose, Shadow replied, “It’s too late for that.”
In that moment, Myles knew he was a dead man. “That’s not what it looks like, I promise you. I wasn’t even there.”
“Don’t lie to me!” Shadow stood and placed the photo back in the pocket. “You have to answer for what you’ve done. And when you’ve made amends, your ‘friends’ will pay their dues, too.” The way “friends” was said carried a level of disdain Myles knew only too well.
“I beg you, please, if you let me go, I promise I won’t do it again.” He tried to untie his hands. “And I’ll stop my friends, too,” he added, using the term “friends” loosely. They weren’t his friends; they were his club members.
“Like I said, it’s too late.” Shadow squatted and pointed at the storefront. “Look up there. Say hi!” Shadow waved up at the cameras above the front doors, with such confidence, relishing it. “They’re going to play this back over and over again. Who knows, I might even make you famous.”
Myles panicked when Shadow went back to tying the rope to the truck’s bumper. “Help! Please, someone – anyone – please help me!” he screamed as loud as he could, in the vain hope someone might hear him.
“Scream like a woman if you want, but we’re in the middle of an industrial estate at two in the morning. There’s no one around for
miles.”
“Don’t go! Please.” Myles knew the sooner Shadow got in the truck, it was over. His desperate pleas were ignored, as his captor opened the driver’s door and got in, slamming the door shut. “Wait! Wait! Wait!” Myles’ bladder gave way when he heard the engine start, the warmth of his urine pooling around him. “Pleeeaaasssee! I don’t want to die!” He heard the truck’s engine rev.
The truck inched forwards, dragging Myles three metres along the tarmac, Myles trying his best to hoist his body up, but unable to, the tarmac tearing into his back. He yelled out in pain, blood squelching beneath him, as the truck stopped. He’d never felt pain like it before. “Fuck you!” He writhed on the floor in agony.
Shadow revved the truck’s engine again.
Myles knew his back couldn’t take any more. He didn’t have time to think about what else to do before Shadow accelerated forwards again, this time six metres. Shadow was enjoying it, thought Myles, his back taking another onslaught. When the truck stopped, he could feel the warmth of blood beneath him again, only a lot more of it. “Please, stop! You’re going to kill me!”
In front of him, he saw an arm extend out of the driver’s window, the thumb up. Myles could barely see through the free-flowing tears. He was in so much pain, he just wanted it to end. “No more, please.” Even if Shadow stopped and let him go, his back was permanently damaged.
Gulping at the wheelspin, the smoke emanating from the tyres, Myles knew the split-second before Shadow accelerated that his time was up. He could smell the burning rubber as the truck leapt forwards.
2
With a groan, Alicia Weekes rolled over and switched off her shrill alarm clock. For the first time in at least three days she hadn’t woken drenched in sweat, reliving the moment a rocket had blown up her Humvee, as she’d been walking alongside it, taking with it her left lower leg. More to the point, she hadn’t watched five of her unit engulfed in flames in her dream, either, which she was grateful for.
Nearly every night for the last three years, she’d heard their screams like she was right there. It was a frightening, sickening sound; it was one she wished she could exorcise from her memory forever. It seemed the only thing that prevented her from dreaming was alcohol. She’d tried everything else she could think of: cannabis, sleeping pills. Nope, none of them worked, only alcohol.
Sitting up in bed, she pulled the duvet back, revealing her left residual limb. Even after three years, it took a couple of moments to register that she no longer had a lower leg, made all the more confusing each morning by the fact she could still feel it. She could still wiggle her toes, move her foot up and down, and even tense her calf muscle. According to the doctors, it was normal for amputees to feel their phantom limbs. Using her hands as support, Weekes turned and dangled her right leg over the bed, while she reached for her prosthetic limb and attached it to her stump. Feeling the suction, she stood, made sure it was on tight and walked through to her bathroom across the hall.
After brushing her teeth, Weekes put on her jogging bottoms, T-shirt and trainers and went for a leisurely jog, knowing she had hours before she was due at the station for her first day on the job. Having left the academy only a fortnight earlier, she knew today was going to be a steep learning curve, for how could it not be? She was going from front-line soldiery, to detective constable. The two jobs were so very different. On the way around her block, Weekes thought about her life, her family… her ex-husband.
She couldn’t blame him for divorcing her; she wasn’t the easiest person to know. However, she could blame him for taking away her little girl, her Hazel, named so after her mum. That, she couldn’t forgive him for. Now she only saw Hazel at weekends. And her daughter lived over an hour away by car, with Nevan and his girlfriend, Erin. Weekes wished she could bring herself to hate her, too. Erin was too kind and selfless to hate; she volunteered at a soup kitchen twice a week, for Christ’s sake, how could she hate that? No, Weekes knew she was at least partly to blame for their marital breakdown.
Before the incident, she was deployed twice to Iraq, on long tours. Nevan had handled it so well, looking after Hazel in her absence. She’d missed her family so much it hurt. What hurt most was video messaging them from the desert, only to have to click off. On more than a couple of occasions, she’d cried herself to sleep missing her beautiful family.
Then, after she’d had her leg blown off, Weekes had had a hard time adjusting to her new life. Nevan and the rest of her family were so patient with her, which made her mood swings worse. Not feeling like she deserved their support, she would fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. Yeah, she’d hated herself for so long, she couldn’t remember a time she didn’t. And Nevan’s patience was awe-inspiring. The mere thought of him touching her made her recoil, not because she didn’t find him attractive, no, because she thought she was ugly, unworthy of his attention, his love.
It seemed his patience had limits. And eighteen months earlier, he’d dropped the bombshell that he thought they should separate. Weekes had cried, apologised, begged him to reconsider. It was pointless, she’d realised, when he confessed he liked someone else. He promised her he hadn’t done anything, hadn’t cheated on her; he admitted he was attracted to her, the other woman. At that point, Weekes knew it was over. It took him a full year before he introduced Erin.
It was Hazel she felt sorry for, not herself. Weekes knew how important it was for a little girl to have her mum around, and visits at the weekend weren’t enough. She and Nevan had been amicably divorced for a year. Divorcing him was her one big regret in life. And as she rounded the last bend after doing two laps of the block, drenched in sweat, she thought her new job might be a blessing in her otherwise tragic life.
Out of breath, she ran up the stairs, reaching her front door on the first floor, waiting until she recovered before letting herself in. She jumped in the shower, standing beneath the warm jets of water, and unwound herself. Life had been shitty, to say the least. After all the negative shit in her life, though, she was a pragmatist at heart. Weekes should’ve known Nevan would leave her eventually. Marriages were fragile; they broke easily, and if you weren’t around both physically and emotionally to repair them… Well, it was curtains, wasn’t it?
After drying herself off, she went to the kitchen and made herself a fry-up, a firm believer in breakfast being the most important meal of the day. It had been beaten into her by the military. Her entire life was governed by the army. When she thought back, she’d followed rules and orders her entire life; there were her parents’ rules; there were her schools’ rules; her college’s; then there was the military’s rules. Yeah, one way or another, she’d followed rules since she was born. Sometimes she envied free spirits, people who could do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. Because it certainly wasn’t her life.
Her plate washed, Weekes looked up at the clock on the wall. It was time to get ready. She was supposed to report for duty at nine and hated being late. Changing into her new grey two-piece suit and black shoes, she checked herself in the mirror and walked towards the front door when her mobile rang. “Hello darling, how are you? Of course you’re staying here tomorrow. It’s just like any other weekend.” She listened. “Just because I’m starting a new job, doesn’t mean anything changes with our visits, sweetheart. Now, stop worrying and get yourself off to school like a good girl.”
Nevan came on the line and she talked with him for a couple of minutes, until she saw it was time to go. Making her excuses, she said goodbye to him and left for her first day at work.
3
Mina clapped while grinning. “Are we really going to look at puppies tomorrow, Mummy?”
Nasreen glanced at her daughter in the rear-view mirror. “We sure are. A deal’s a deal.” The turning for Mina’s school was up ahead. Nasreen indicated left, slowed, turning her attention to the road, even though she knew the area. “And you get to choose which puppy we bring home.”
“Yay!” Mina jumped up an
d down in her seat as much as the belt allowed.
“Now, before you go getting all excited, you know the rules, right?” Nasreen turned into the school road. When she heard Mina huff, Nasreen asked, “And what are they?”
“Me and Katerina are to walk him every day. Only feed him once a day. He’s not allowed on the furniture.”
“Good girl.” Nasreen pulled up outside the school. Her four-and-a-half-year-old was too clever, sometimes for her own good. Nasreen was always so proud of Mina’s command of English. Her daughter read at a grade twice higher than her age, which was why she’d caved in at getting a puppy. Nasreen had never been allowed one growing up, so when Mina asked, Nasreen played hard to get, knowing that if her daughter continued to pester her, she would eventually relent. In all honesty, she wanted a cute furball around the house, too. “Right, we’re here.” She turned to her daughter in her seat. “And we’re going to Uncle Terrence’s tomorrow for a barbecue.”
There was another loud “yay!” from Mina.
Nasreen thought Mina was about to explode with excitement, and pitied her teacher having to calm her down. Nasreen got out of the car, walked around to Mina’s door, opened it and helped her out. Walking towards the school, she nodded at some parents, while saying hello to others. At the gates, she bent down and gave Mina a kiss on her lips; then she watched her daughter walk through to the safety of the playground.
Back in her car, Nasreen looked at the time. “Oh shit!” She started the engine. The previous day, she’d been sent an email asking her to meet Chief Superintendent Bukhari in his office at nine, sharp. She was cutting it fine. “Come on, get out of there!” she yelled at a car trying to parallel park. “Some of us have to work, you know.”
Changing partner was stressful; she didn’t know what to expect of Alicia Weekes. When she’d been informed of the news, Nasreen had dug around, trying to get the low-down on this year’s top recruit. Being ex-military, Weekes’ performance had been nothing short of exemplary in every area, apparently. Even with a prosthetic leg, Weekes had outshone her classmates at the training centre. Academically, she was equally superior, achieving nearly full marks in every subject.