Thrown Down Read online

  ‘Couldn’t sleep, sir’.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep as in just one of the nights or couldn’t sleep as in you’re a widower who’s missing his wife like mad?’

  ‘You know how that feels’.

  ‘I didn’t mean to pry’.

  ‘No, I don’t mind, sir’ said Adrian. ‘It’s just that sometimes you feel as if you’ve had the stuffing knocked out of you and it comes on without any warning’.

  ‘And yet other times it’s almost as if nothing ever happened and your wife will be there when you get home even though she isn’t?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it, that’s exactly it’.

  ‘There’s no hard or fast rule to dealing with it, Adrian’ said Jeff. ‘I lost Lillie Mae almost three years ago now and yet still sometimes missing her is like a knife cutting into me. Look, once this case is over and done with why don’t we talk about all this properly over a pint? Start our own mutual support group’.

  ‘Yeah, okay’ said Adrian who was more than pleased with Jeff’s suggestion. He needed someone to talk to about it all. He could talk to Ollie Wright but not about that. Ollie was the kind of friend with benefits who he turned to whenever he had the overwhelming urge for some man love or rather some man sex that he was rather partial to from time to time. They knew they shouldn’t do it because of working so closely together but one afternoon they hadn’t been able to help checking into a local hotel and using nothing in the room except the bed and the shower. But it wasn’t that side of his psyche that was giving him any problems at the moment. His sessions with Ollie had sorted that for the time being. But it couldn’t sort the emotional plunges he went through whenever missing his wife Penny got on top of him. He still could never imagine settling down with a man. He considered himself to be more than fifty percent straight and wanted to actually live with another woman in every sense of the word. ‘I think that might be a good idea and thank you’.

  ‘You’re welcome’ said Jeff. ‘Now, aren’t you and DC Joe Alexander going to Manchester airport to meet our guest from Australia this morning?’

  ‘We are, sir, I’m meeting Joe there in about an hour’s time’ said Adrian. ‘Although Detective Constable Ryan’s plane is running about half an hour late so I’ve told Joe to get the bacon sandwiches in’.

  ‘Good one’ said Jeff. ‘Well I’m going down to see our friend who’s been in the cells all night’.

  ‘Good luck with that, sir’ said Adrian. ‘Apparently she’s been banging on the door all through the night and hasn’t been able to stop crying’.

  ‘Right. Well let’s see if all that has loosened her tongue sufficiently to give us something substantial to go on. By the way, did anything turn up when we checked out the families of both O’Connell and Murphy?’

  ‘No, sir, nothing unusual’ said Adrian. ‘The only line that went cold was that of Patricia O’Connell who we now know of course went to Australia’.

  ‘Yes’ said Jeff, thinking back to the conversation he’d had with special branch officer Howard Freeman and remembering that it’s what special branch don’t tell you that’s of greater value than what they do. ‘So why is there no official record of her having left the UK and why is there no record of the Australian authorities asking for information about her before granting her a visa?’

  ‘Well it’s as if she just fell off the earth, sir’ Adrian explained. ‘The trail literally just stops’.

  ‘So why does it just stop?’

  ‘Your guess on that one is as good as mine, sir’ said Adrian.

  ‘We shouldn’t have to guess, Adrian. It should be there in the records somewhere. I’m making it your job to find out why it isn’t’.

  THROWN DOWN THIRTEEN

  Jade Matheson woke up with a start. Lately she’d been having a recurring dream that she was about to fall out of bed and go hurtling down some deep shaft that would have no end. It made her wince. She reached out for Chris but he wasn’t in bed beside her. She put on a short black silk robe that she’d brought with her and went to look for him. She found him putting things into the car outside.

  ‘Get back inside!’ he commanded.

  ‘Okay, okay, I’m sorry’ she threw back at him. She had no idea where they were. She’d fallen asleep just after he’d come off the M61 just south of Preston and headed east towards Blackburn and only woken up when they’d got to this big old rambling farmhouse which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. She thought she’d feel good today but instead she felt more than a little frightened. Chris had been rather less than pleased when she’d turned up last night ostensibly to say goodbye as they’d arranged. But she’d had her bag packed. She knew he didn’t want her to go with him but she was going to go with him no matter what he said because she loved him. She thought they had something going. She’d told him that he needed her especially as she knew everything. That’s when he’d slapped her. He said that she made him feel trapped. He’d been cornered into taking her with him. He couldn’t risk her going to the police and spilling all the beans.

  ‘Don’t question me’ he said when she came back into the kitchen and he was now back inside with the back door closed and locked. ‘Don’t ever question me’.

  ‘I wasn’t questioning you’ said Jade. ‘I was just wanting to know what was going on. Haven’t I got a right to ask that?’

  ‘No, seeing as you asked. You invited yourself along on this part of my little journey so you’ll have to take the consequences of what might happen to you’.

  ‘What’s changed, Chris?’ she asked pitifully. ‘You couldn’t get enough of me when we first got together. We had such a lot of fun. What happened to all that?’

  ‘You’re here’ he said, flatly. ‘That’s what’s changed. You were never part of the plan’.

  ‘But I thought we were going to go away together?’ she whimpered.

  ‘I told you that to keep you on side, you stupid bitch! I never had any intention of taking you anywhere with me. You’d served your purpose, just like your sister and just like that sad old cow Carol Anderson’.

  ‘Don’t you dare compare me to her!’

  ‘Why not? She was just like you in that you’re sad and desperate and will do anything to get hold of a man and then keep him. The only difference between the two of you is that you’ve come from a well-off family whereas hers deserted her’.

  ‘You don’t mean that’.

  ‘You were just there when I needed somebody in bed and out’.

  ‘I’ve helped you do exactly what you wanted even though it meant killing two men, one of whom I liked very much. And now you’re turning on me as if I’m the enemy when all I want to do is help you’.

  ‘You did all that because you were that desperate to get one up on your sister and you were desperate to please me. And by the way, I didn’t start any of this. I’m just settling some old scores’.

  ‘I don’t suppose the police would agree with that’.

  Chris grabbed her by the throat and pinned her up against the wall. ‘Get off on this do you? Hanging out with bad boys who you think just walk along and kill like it was nothing? Little Miss middle class conscience from the bowels of Cheshire and her bad man who can take someone’s life like it had never been there in the first place? Don’t tell me it isn’t making you wet right now. Don’t tell me you don’t long for me to get inside you. That’s what it’s all about for you, isn’t it? You girls are all the fucking same. You don’t like the regular guys who’ll take care of you and treat you right. Oh no, you say they’re boring. You like to play with danger and challenge yourself to care about who gets hurt in the crossfire. You like the ones who’ll really make you wet. Oh yes, that’s what you like, isn’t it? You and all the other girls who dare to be honest about it. You like a man who you can never be quite sure of because it keeps you on your fucking toes. Am I right? Of course I am. You’ve even got your own father not to tell the police that you were planning to head off with me. You want him to lie if they ask him directly. What m
akes you and girls like you any different from the sad old tarts like Carol Anderson? If you had dignity or self-respect you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t have come anywhere near me. But you have no dignity or self-respect and that’s why you’re here’.

  Chris let go of her neck and Jade placed the palms of her hands against the wall to steady herself. ‘You don’t want me here?’

  ‘Oh finally she fucking gets it! No, I don’t want you here. But I’m stuck with you now and there’s no way I’m letting you go until my mission is complete. So get used to life on the run, baby. It’s going to get a lot rougher than this and don’t think that you and I will go running off into the sunset at the end like Bonnie and fucking Clyde or some other such nonsense that fills your overly emotional head. I’ll be wherever they’ll never find me and you’ll be left to pick up all the blood stained pieces of my handiwork’.

  ‘You’re planning to kill again?’

  ‘I told you I don’t kill. I even scores’.

  Jade felt herself go cold. ‘Are you going to tell me who it is?’

  ‘Not this time, no’ Chris answered. ‘This one takes a bit more planning but I’m almost there’. He leaned closer to her and placed the end of his finger on her throat. ‘And don’t you be giving me any unnecessary worries in the meantime. Otherwise it might be your head that ends up on the block’. He touched her face. She looked absolutely terrified. ‘Oh and if you’re looking for your mobile phone don’t worry. I’ve got it and I’m keeping it until we’re done’.

  ‘You can’t do that!’

  ‘You’re not getting it back so stop whining!’

  Jade thought about doing a run for it but she was terrified of what Chris might do. She couldn’t believe that everything he’d told her about the way he felt about her had been a complete fabrication. How blind and stupid had she been? And he was right. She had been desperate. She was worried sick about what was to become of her now that Chris was holding her there as opposed to her being there of her own free will. That’s why she couldn’t try alerting the police. They’d want to know why she suddenly developed a sense of fear and of conscience just when he turned against her. They’d want to know why she’d been protecting him and standing by whilst he carried out two murders. This was a mess. This was an absolute bloody mess! She should’ve left well alone. She should’ve left him to Tabitha.

  But she did know Chris. She knew how predictable he could be in some ways. If he wanted to hide something it would be wrapped up in an item of his clothing. That’s where he usually hid things.

  She looked up from where she’d slumped tearfully to the floor and saw that he was outside in the yard doing something with the car. She looked around in some drawers in the kitchen to see if she could find something that belonged to whoever owned the house that would give her an address for it. She didn’t have to look far. There was a stack of bills in old envelopes all with the same address on them. ‘Yew Tree Farm, Hurst Green, Lancashire’ and they were addressed to a Mr. Neville Cotton. Jade thought he must be the owner of the place. There was a postcode too and for the first time she felt like she could get back some control.

  She went as quietly as she could upstairs and into the small spare room to the right at the top of the landing. She was shaking. Her palms were all wet and she could feel the beads of sweat run down her spine. She could still hear him outside. That was something.

  She was shaking so much she fumbled through his bag of clothes at first. Then she stopped. She took a deep breath. Then another. Then she went back to looking through his things with less haste and more speed this time until bingo! She found her mobile. She switched it on and waited frantically for it to get a signal.

  It was only when she’d finished her call that she turned round and saw that Chris was standing there. She started shaking so much she dropped the phone. The look in his eye made her understand that she’d just made the worst mistake of her life.

  Detective Constable Collette Ryan hadn’t known what to expect what she walked in on her first day being assigned to the Greater Manchester police. She was nervous. She was shy. But she hadn’t expected to have an instant attraction for her new temporary boss, DSI Jeff Barton. On closer inspection of him though she decided to hold on before she changed into some clean underwear. He was wearing a thin gold wedding ring and having had the dirty done on her by her ex-husband and the air hostess he’d got off with in a Perth hotel, she wasn’t about to do the same to some other poor woman on the other side of the world. She fancied him. She fancied him rotten. Maybe later, when she was in the bath on her own she might decide to pleasure herself with her amourous thoughts. But that’s as far as it would go. Other women’s men were not on her radar screen. Adrian and John seemed like nice guys. They never stopped chatting away on the ride from the airport into the city and what had struck her about Manchester was that it wasn’t really any different as far as cities go from most Australian cities she’d been to. It had more history and the buildings were different. But she’d noticed that such were the cultural similarities between Australia and the UK that, although she was on the other side of the world, she didn’t actually feel like she was. Yesterday after having a few hours sleep she’d taken a walk around the city to check it out and get her bearings and when she got back to her hotel room she’d switched on the TV and on one of the channels they were showing Neighbours. Then Home and Away followed it. It was all rather comforting. And they reminded her of plots she’d forgotten about.

  The briefing seemed to be going well. Jeff Barton seemed to have a good hand on his team and they seemed to respect him. Adrian and Joe had said that was the case and she hadn’t seen anything to contradict their assertion. DI Ollie Wright looked frightening intelligent and was probably very focused on his career. He was friendly and nice like the others though. She’d also worked out that he was gay even before Joe Alexander had told her because Ollie was the only male member of the team not to have focused any momentary attention on her breasts. By her own admission she’d gone a bid mad after her husband left her and ended up getting what she called her pancake chest inflated. All her friends in the sisterhood had shaken their heads and expressed their disappointment in her but she wasn’t in much of a listening mood at the time. They could all joke about it now and everyone called them a ‘triumph of Swedish engineering’. Well she’d never been anywhere near Sweden but her surgeon had come down from Stockholm to back pack across Australia twenty years ago and he’d ended up staying after meeting an Aussie girl. Collette had found Bjorn to be a really nice man who’d been one of the few to understand what she’d been going through at the time. But then again he was being paid to understand so it was perhaps not that surprising. She’d never had a pancake chest. She just felt better with bigger tits.

  She liked the way Jeff Barton was managing everything. He was commanding without throwing his weight around. He didn’t have to do that because his presence was enough to make people sit tight and listen to what was going on. He was so different to her boss Burnsey back home whose briefings often descended into slanging match chaos with nobody respecting him. How he’d got away with it for all these years she’ll just never know.

  ‘Tabitha Murphy has been formerly charged with conspiracy to murder her husband Barry Murphy’ said DI Ollie Wright. ‘She’s admitted to helping Chris O’Neill with planning the murder although she thought it was just a straight forward case, if you can call it that, of killing the husband to get the wife. She also knew about O’Neill’s intention to murder Padraig O’Connell but she swears she didn’t know any further details. She also swears that she doesn’t know O’Neill’s true identity and she doesn’t know why he wanted to kill O’Connell’.

  ‘And do we believe her?’ asked DS Joe Alexander.

  ‘Yes, I think we do’ said DSI Jeff Barton. ‘She’s terrified of being in prison and I’m sure she’d tell us anything to make a deal that would keep her out. But so far there’s no deal’.

  ‘Quite rig
ht too in my opinion, sir’ said Joe.

  ‘If she knew something more than she’s already told us she’d be telling us with a desperate enthusiasm’ said Jeff. ‘I’m certain of that’.

  ‘So now we come to her sister Jade Matheson who has absconded with Chris O’Neill’ Ollie went on.

  ‘That’s some betrayal’ said DI Adrian Bradshaw. ‘Letting your sister think she’s met the love of her life and then secretly planning to steal him off her. These girls spell red for danger’.

  ‘They so do, DI Bradshaw’ Ollie concurred. ‘There’s been no sighting of O’Neill or Jade Matheson now for forty-eight hours. Miss Matheson was last seen by her staff in the hairdressing salon she owns in Wilmslow on Tuesday afternoon. She told the salon manager Diane Wentworth that she was going away for a few days and leaving Wentworth in charge. Wentworth didn’t think this was unusual since Matheson often apparently took off for a couple of days here and there, often taking her niece Georgina Murphy with her during the school holidays’.

  ‘So she thought no more of it’ said Adrian.

  ‘No’ said Ollie. ‘She didn’t. There was no reason for her to think anything of it’.

  ‘What do the parents of Jade and Tabitha think about all this?’ Adrian asked. ‘They must be at their wit’s end although the family dynamic suggests that there was no love lost between the sisters and from what we can gather there wasn’t much lost between the parents either’. He shook his head. ‘All that luck and good fortune and yet they just couldn’t get on with each other’.

  ‘Until they came to bury the hatchet in each other’s neck’ said Ollie. ‘Like you say Adrian, all that glitters isn’t gold. But I don’t think we should spend any more time on these families now. The same with the Murphy’s and the O’Connell’s. There’s absolutely nothing to connect any of them with the two murders and I think we should just concentrate on going after O’Neill and Matheson’.