Death Rites Read online

  He wouldn’t have minded so much if he’d been injured in a war zone whilst doing something worthwhile. Helping rebuild a war torn country and instructing new recruits in the local military police, something he’d done with some success a few years ago. Maybe if his leg had been shattered by an IED, or bullets even, he could have handled it better. But to be medically retired because he fell out of the back of a bloody lorry, well that was embarrassing in the extreme. Who would have thought the great Sgt Major Crane could be laid so low by an inexperienced soldier?

  Left by himself for most of the day, as his wife Tina had returned to work in a local bank, he battled his demons on his own. Sometimes he was mentally strong enough to go through the exercises the physiotherapist had insisted he do every day. But on other days he felt suffocated by a cloak of hopelessness and lay in bed, helpless, bitter, angry and unwilling to interact with anyone.

  Towelling himself dry, and then rubbing his short dark curly hair, Crane was glad that Tina and Daniel were in the house, it being Saturday. If he had been on his own he realised it would have been a rabbit hole kind of day. Once the gremlins forced his mind down into the warren of depression, he wouldn’t have been able to find his way out. Limping back into the bedroom to dress, he realised the role that Tina was playing in his recovery was pivotal. She was stoically accepting of the situation and did her best to cheer him up, using their son Daniel as a beacon of hope; trying to shine a light into the blackness of his all-consuming depression. She refused to be brow beaten by his illness and carried on serenely, as if he were the old Tom, not the new bleak monster he sometimes changed into. Taking her lead, he did his best to try to ignore the melancholy, but it didn’t always work and on those days he would stamp angrily around the house, railing against life, the army, fate, God and anyone else he could think of.

  Determined not to be that man, at least not today, Crane hobbled down the stairs to join his family.

  3

  After the dream that had seemed so real, Bethany resolved to take any chance she could to escape. She could feel herself getting weaker and weaker. She had to be strong. But strong in her head, as she was no match for the large man who came to bring her food and drink. She wasn’t stupid. She knew she had no fighting skills, she had no weapons. All she had was a burning desire to get out of her prison and back home to her family.

  She wondered again - where was she? Was she still in Birmingham? Had anyone noticed she’d gone missing? There were still no clues as to her location. If she ever left the room it was when she was drugged and so had no memory of it. Very few sounds filtered down to where she was. Despite concentrating on listening as hard as she could, she only got the faintest rustle of the leaves in the wind or the drip, drip, drip of the rain. Today there was neither and so she heard the footsteps clearly.

  Backing into the corner of the room, making herself as small as possible, she watched the door. As the footsteps became louder, her heartbeat raced. The sound whooshed in her ears, rather like Mum’s washing machine when it was rinsing the clothes. It was the thought of her mum that did it. She began to cry, her tears plopping on the mattress like the rain she occasionally heard outside.

  The door creaked open and there he was, filling the door with his bulk. To Bethany he seemed huge; a bear of a man, or a gorilla. Either way he frightened her.

  “You alright?”

  He’d never spoken before, so the sound of his deep, grumbling voice made her gasp and cry even harder.

  “You hurt?”

  She managed to shake her head in reply.

  “Brought some food.”

  He placed a tray on the floor and she saw through her tears the usual sandwich and bottle of water.

  “I want to go home,” she whispered.

  “What? I can’t hear you,” and he moved closer.

  She said it again, but the lump in her throat made the words stick there as well.

  “What?”

  He took another two steps forward, so he was now within touching distance. That frightened Bethany even more, but she screwed up her courage and screamed in his face, “I want to go home!” pouring into those few words all the anger she felt towards this man who she didn’t know and who didn’t know her.

  The large man jumped back in surprise.

  “Get out,” she screamed. “Get out and leave me alone!” terrified that he was going to take her somewhere and do whatever it was he did when she was there. The injuries on the backs of her hands throbbed in time with her racing heart.

  He turned and bolted for the door, slamming it behind him and she could hear his boots thumping up the wooden steps. Relieved that he’d gone, she gradually calmed down and looked down at the tray on the floor. She was desperate for water, but too afraid to drink it in case it made her fall asleep again. But she thought it might be alright to eat the sandwich.

  Easing herself off the mattress, she put her bare feet on the floor. As she sat there, trying to decide if it was okay to eat, she felt a rush of cold air playing on her feet and legs. It must be windy outside. But she’d never felt a draught before. Standing up, she hobbled over to the door, to see if she could hear anything from the other side. As she put her ear to the wood it moved slightly. Putting her fingers on the door, she tentatively pushed on it and it opened slightly. Jumping back in surprise, she realised that maybe, just maybe, the man had forgotten to lock it when he left. This could be her chance…

  4

  “Got a strange one here for you, guv.”

  DI Anderson sighed. What was it with this place? Aldershot was supposed to be a quiet backwater in the south of England, not a magnet for strange cases. And why did he always get the strange ones, especially on a Monday morning? He suspected it was because others flatly refused to take them, citing all sorts of excuses for their reluctance to help; whereas Anderson knew he was a sucker for a difficult case and, more importantly, so did his colleagues. And so he leaned back in his chair, tried and failed to tame his thinning grey hair that was standing on end again, and took off his reading glasses. Often he forgot and left them on, ending up peering myopically at his colleagues.

  “Go on, then,” he sighed, throwing his glasses on the desk in his office in the CID room at Aldershot Police Station. “Hit me with it.”

  “A child was found wandering early this morning, nearly naked and covered in strange markings.”

  “Eh?” Anderson sat up straight in his chair in his cubby hole of an office. “You serious?”

  “Unfortunately I am, sir.”

  “What sort of strange markings?”

  The young police officer consulted his notes. “Not sure, sir, that’s all the information I have.”

  “Name?” Anderson barked.

  “DC Douglas, sir.”

  “No, what’s the child’s name you idiot!”

  “Oh, sorry,” the young man flushed, his round, red face reminding Anderson of a beetroot. “No one has any idea, sorry.”

  “For God’s sake, Douglas, stop saying sorry. And stop playing with your tie. Not that it matches your shirt. Is purple ‘in’ these days?”

  “Yes, sir, I mean...”

  “Age?”

  “The doctors think she’s about 11 years old.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Frimley Park Hospital, sir. A uniformed PC is sitting with her.”

  “Right,” Anderson said, forgetting about Douglas’ purple tie and pink shirt. “Check missing persons, check with the Garrison that a child hasn’t been reported missing to them, get a family liaison officer out of uniform and over to the hospital to relieve the uniformed PC, get a copy of the statement of the member of the public who found her and start searching CCTV in the vicinity of where she was found. Have forensics been called?”

  “No idea, sir.”

  “Then find out and if no one has been called out then send someone to the hospital ASAP. Right then,” Anderson grabbed his tweed jacket off the back of his chair, “I’m off.”

>   “Where to, sir?”

  Anderson gave the young man a withering look and felt such a stupid question didn’t warrant an answer. His hand went to his mobile to call Crane and see if he wanted to tag along, but then he remembered that Crane was out of the army and out of action. He must stop doing that, he berated himself, but old habits die hard.

  Upon reaching Frimley Park Hospital, he got directions to the ward where the child was recovering from her as yet unknown ordeal and walked through the myriad of corridors, all of which seemed to smell of antiseptic and cabbage. He finally reached the correct ward and was shown to the child’s room by a nurse.

  “We felt it best that she be in a room on her own. Much quieter for her,” the nurse said as they walked down the ward.

  “How is she?”

  “I’ll call the doctor who will come up and see you.”

  “Is she talking?”

  “As I said, the doctor will be up shortly.”

  Anderson gave up questioning her as she clearly wasn’t going to offer an opinion. Stopping outside the room, he nodded his thanks to the officious nurse and paused before going in. Looking through the glass panel in the door, he saw a young girl lying motionless on a bed that seemed to swamp her. Her eyes were closed, her arms by her side lying on top of the blanket that was covering her. Along both arms crudely drawn swirls and symbols could be seen. They looked as if they had been painted on by a particularly bad artist. A bag of clear fluid was dripping something into the back of her hand, but that seemed to be the only treatment she was receiving. There were no beeping monitors, so Anderson surmised she must be in a stable condition. Her skin was almost translucent, dark bruises brushed her eyes and to be honest she looked as though she were dead. He wondered what the hell she had been through and that thought sent a shudder through him.

  “Guv?” a soft voice asked.

  “What?” Anderson turned to see a woman standing next to him.

  “Sorry to startle you,” she replied. “PC Victoria Fleming, FLO, out of uniform as requested.”

  “Oh, right, I was just looking…” Anderson gestured to the window.

  “Poor kid,” the PC said as she joined Anderson. “And we’ve no idea what happened to her?”

  “No,” Anderson took a breath and turned to face the FLO. “I want you to sit with her, so someone is there when she wakes up. Take the place of the uniformed officer. I just thought that a uniform might scare her. I’ll update you as soon as the bloody doctor turns up.”

  “Right, guv,” Fleming said and grabbed a bag from the floor.

  “Fleming?”

  “Yes, guv?”

  “What the hell is in that bag? Don’t tell me it’s your lunch?”

  Fleming smiled. “Well, not just my lunch. I grabbed 2 or 3 children’s books as I left the station. I thought that reading to her, once she wakes up, would be a good way of engaging with her.”

  Anderson nodded his appreciation and Fleming slipped in the room to relieve the uniformed officer.

  5

  While waiting for the doctor, Anderson called DC Douglas. “Got anything for me yet?” he barked without any preamble, realising as he did so that it seemed he’d picked up some bad habits from Crane over the years.

  “Um, no, guv. Should I?”

  Anderson could hear the tremble in the lad’s voice and decided to be a bit kinder to him.

  “Okay, let’s go through my requests. Is someone checking missing persons?”

  “Yes, guv, DS Bullock is.”

  “Good. What about that witness statement?”

  “Got it and I’ve asked the Farnborough CCTV centre to scan the relevant areas,” said Douglas, his voice growing in confidence.

  “And forensics?”

  “A CSI is on his way to you now.”

  “Good work, Douglas. What about the Garrison?”

  “I’ve spoken to Sgt Williams and he promised to get back to me on that one.”

  “Right. I’ll be back in the station once the forensic evidence has been collected…”

  “And you are?” The obnoxious tone riled Anderson, who hadn’t heard anyone approach him.

  He closed his phone, cutting off DC Douglas and turned to see a young man, of about Douglas’ age, who was surely too young to be a doctor, dressed in green scrubs with a lanyard around his neck sporting a plastic ID card. “DI Anderson,” he replied. “Aldershot Police.”

  “Oh, right, Dr Hammond,” the young man extended his hand in what seemed to be a gesture of apology. “Sorry about that, but we can’t be too careful.”

  Anderson shook the proffered limb, which was clammy, and Anderson wondered why. Perhaps it was nothing more than the strange circumstances of the arrival of his patient. “What can you tell me about her?”

  Consulting a file he held in his other hand, the doctor said, “When she arrived she was unconscious. Her clothes consisted of nothing more than a black shift dress and it was torn and dirty.”

  “Where’s the dress,” Anderson interrupted.

  “In a bag, in her locker, in the room. As I was saying, her feet were bare and as a result they are red and sore, with cuts all over the soles of her feet. As you can see, her arms are covered with those strange symbols.”

  “Has she been washed?”

  “What? No I don’t think so.”

  “Has a forensic expert been called?”

  “No idea, DI Anderson. I would have thought that was your department.”

  Despite his youth, the doctor had backbone, Anderson decided.

  “If I may continue…”

  Anderson nodded his acknowledgement of the rebuke.

  “She is suffering from shock and our best guess is that there must have been some sort of trauma as she’s unable, or unwilling, to speak for now. When we asked her what had happened to her, she simply shook her head as if she didn’t know.”

  “Do you think she’ll remember anything?”

  “It’s doubtful in the short term, but her memory should come back. Slowly, mind. Her brain will probably be blocking the experience until she is better able to cope with the memories.”

  “Anything physically wrong with her?”

  “There’s no bruising on her torso, legs and arms that we could see, it appears there are no broken bones, nor any breaks that have healed and no obvious sexual trauma.”

  Anderson nodded, relieved. “There’s lots of ‘no’s’ in there, Doc, anything positive that we can use to try and find out what happened to her?”

  “Well, she was very dehydrated and with a low blood count, with evidence of needle marks on the back of both hands.”

  “Needle marks?”

  “Yes, um, it seems that she could have had, um, cannula’s in her hands.”

  Ah, Anderson realised they were now getting to the nitty gritty of the case and what could be the source of the Doctor’s nervousness. “What? Like you use to give a patient an anaesthetic?”

  The doctor nodded. “Definitely. She was certainly given some sort of relaxant at any rate. But the marks are quite large and the back of both hands are bruised.”

  “Which means?”

  “They have been there for some time. So, um, coupled with the dehydration and low blood count…” sweat was forming on the Doctor’s brow which he wiped away, messing up his gelled hair in the process.

  “Yes?” There was definitely something strange coming, Anderson could see a pulse beating on the Doctor’s temple.

  “I think someone has been taking her blood. Draining it from her body via her hands. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Anderson thought that he hadn’t either. No wonder young Dr McAllister had been nervous about telling him that strange piece of news and why the nurse had been unwilling to talk to him.

  Why on earth would someone want to drain a child’s blood? The very thought of it was too horrific to contemplate. This was certainly shaping up to be one of his strangest cases yet. He wondered what Crane would make of it?


  6

  Diane Chambers sat opposite DI Anderson in his cubbyhole of an office, filled with files spilling off chairs, his desk and bookcases; a waterfall of paper. The space never changed and Diane wondered every time she visited Anderson, if he’d have had a clear-out. So far she’d been disappointed. His tweed jacket was slung over the back of his chair and their cups of tea were accompanied by two caramel biscuits, much to Diane’s delight as she’d missed breakfast that morning.

  “Diane, I need your help,” Anderson began.

  Those few words were music to her ears. It looked like that for once she’d have a full briefing about a case from the police, instead of having to wring every single piece of information out of them. Or at least she hoped that was what was about to happen. She ran her fingers through her short, dark, curly hair, then crossed her legs and leaned in to listen.

  “There’s a particularly difficult and delicate case that I’m working on and it needs sensitive reporting.”

  “That’s an interesting choice of words,” said Diane, knowing full well that the local police and military were of the opinion that sensitive was the last word anyone would use to describe her reporting. Hard hitting, thought provoking, and utterly biased were just some of the descriptors usually used when talking about her articles. But sensitive? Not so much and the thought made Diane smile. “What have you got for me?”