Let It Bleed

Francis Yamoah

Description

A BLOOD THIRSTY KILLER HAS TAKEN HIS FIRST VICTIM AND HE'S GOING TO KILL AGAIN.On what becomes her last day as a uniformed police officer, Lucy Collins discovers the body of a woman at a construction site while on patrol.THE INVESTIGATION TEAM IS FAST RUNNING OUT OF LEADS AND TIME.The next day Lucy gets the news she'd been waiting for. She's been promoted to Detective and she joins the CID team investigating the murder of the woman whose body she'd discovered. But every hopeful lead comes to a dead-end with no new ones on the horizon.AND THE KILLER'S NEXT TARGET IS ONE OF THE INVESTIGATION TEAM.

Informations

• Publié par: SRC Books
• Date de parution: 15 août 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783017546
• Langue: English

Extrait

Table of Contents
Title
Copyright Page
Dedication
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
REPRESSED MEMORIES
SIX
Some Facts and Figures
Acknowledgements
LET IT BLEED

Francis Yamoah


SRC Books
Copyright © Francis Yamoah 2015
All rights reserved
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
for my sister
Selina Yamoah
ONE
It was 10:45 PM and the two uniformed officers were in the last fifteen minutes of their ten hour shift. The highlight of their day had been chasing a graffiting young man on foot for about a mile and wrestling him to the ground to cuff him. In total they’d arrested two people, cautioned three and they’d both taken hits in the form of thrown household appliances and punches when they broke up a domestic dispute and two fighting youths. In the last hour they’d circled Thames View Estate in their patrol car with no incidents to deal with and they’d been infected with the contagious illness of yawning. It was a welcomed end to a long shift.
‘Alright Rookie, take us back to the station,’ said Police Constable Lucy Collins yawning.
‘I really wish you would stop calling me that,’ the young police officer said.
‘What, Rookie? Why?’
‘Because it’s been two weeks.’
‘So?’
‘So James called me Rookie earlier today for the first time, and until then he’d called me by my actual name, you know, the name my parents gave me. I don’t want to be on my tenth year on the force and still be referred to as Rookie. I’m afraid it’s becoming a nickname instead of a reference to how long I’ve been on the force.’
‘Rookie isn’t a bad nickname.’
‘It may not be bad but I don’t want it. Could you call me by my name?’
Lucy said nothing, she just stared at him.
‘Please?’
‘Alright Oakley, take us back to the station.’
‘I actually prefer Dan, but I guess my surname is better than Rookie.’
Oakley made a left off Great Galley Close onto Wanderer Drive, heading for the station. As they drove ahead a man walking towards them started to frantically wave them down.
Oakley stopped the car next to the man and Lucy rolled down her window.
‘Is everything okay?’ Lucy asked the young man who looked to be in his late teens or early twenties. He had dark hair and was about six feet, give or take a few inches.
‘With me yeah, but I’m on my way back from the corner shop and I just heard screams of help coming from one of the new buildings down there,’ the man said pointing. ‘The construction site. I was rushing home to call 999 but I saw you guys coming and thought I might as well tell you.’
‘Why do you have to get home before you called 999, don’t you have a mobile phone?’ Oakley asked.
‘I left it at home rushing to get to the shop before it closed.’
‘Which one of the buildings did the screams come from?’ Lucy asked.
‘It came from the first set of terraced houses; I was across the road so I’m not certain on which one of the houses but I’d guess the second house from the right.’
‘Okay Sir, what’s your address?’ Lucy asked, taking out her notepad.
The man hesitated. ‘What do you need my address for?’ he asked.
‘In case we need to contact you for an official statement.’
‘Just up the road, number fifty-six.’
Lucy wrote 56 Wanderer drive . ‘And your name?’
Again the man hesitated. ‘John, John Wright.’
Lucy wrote on her notepad and said, ‘Thank you Mr. Wright, you can go home, we’ll have a look.’
‘Okay,’ the man said and walked away.
‘You think he’s messing with us or he actually did hear something?’ Oakley asked.
‘Well, we can’t afford to ignore it, just in case he’s not one of the many imbeciles who take joy from wasting police time,’ Lucy responded, her eyes fixated on the side mirror watching the man briskly walk away. ‘Call it in and let’s check it out.’
Oakley called it in and drove on to the start of Wanderer Drive. Directly ahead of them, across Renwick Road, on Bastable Avenue were the unfinished new builds. A set of thirteen three storey terraced houses, and a block of flats with five floors of one to three bedroom flats, were under construction and almost completed with windows but no doors. Oakley parked right in front of the uncompleted new builds. They got out and walked down towards where the terraced houses where located.
The site was only lit at one end by a single floodlight powered by a generator which hummed from somewhere in the block of flats. The five storey block of flats shaded the floodlight which meant the other end of the site where the terraced houses were located was only partially illuminated. It was dark enough for Lucy to think she needed the use of her flashlight. She pulled it off her duty belt and turned it on. She flashed it around and spotted an opening in the construction fence circling the site about a metre ahead of them. Aside from the hum from the generator, it was quiet apart from the loud rattling of aluminium rolling shutters as the shop keeper closed his corner shop about a hundred metres away on Chelmer Crescent.
‘Do you think he would’ve heard the apparent scream?’ Oakely asked.
‘Who?’
‘The shop keeper, over there.’
‘The shop is about a hundred meters away and he would’ve been in the shop with his television, radio or whatever he uses to keep himself entertained through the day on. It’s not likely. We can go through there,’ Lucy said pointing at the opening in the fence.
The fence was made up of individual mesh panels slotted into a heavy concrete base and secured to each other with a simple clip in the middle. A securing clip was missing and one of the two panels it was meant to secure had been disconnected from its concrete base creating the opening in the fence.
Oakley and Lucy walked to the opening. Oakley squeezed through to the other side of the fence. Lucy handed her flashlight to him, lifted the disconnected panel and widened the opening. She walked through the opening and joined Oakley on the other side.
She took the flashlight from Oakley and flashed it on each of the terraced houses. ‘Do you hear anything?’ she asked.
‘Nope, it looks like the man was a time-wasting imbecile after all.’
‘Maybe; which one of the houses did he say the scream came from, the second from the right?’
‘Yeah.’
They walked up to the house in question and paused. The house was very dark and the quiet now felt somewhat eerie.
‘Do you have your baton?’ Lucy asked.
‘Yeah,’ Oakley responded.
‘Get it ready.’
‘Where’s yours?’
‘I think I left it at the station when we took in the graffiti kid.’
‘There’s nothing in there.’
‘Get it ready Rookie!’
‘I guess we’re back to calling me Rookie.’
Lucy said nothing. Oakley pulled his baton out of its holder and flicked it open. Lucy stepped inside the doorless house with Oakley right behind her. To their immediate left was the staircase. To their immediate right was a doorway to a room Lucy suspected would subsequently become a living room. She quickly looked inside; there was nothing in it. Ahead of them at the end of the hallway was another doorway to a room at the back of the house.
Oakley took out his flashlight, turned it on and flashed it up the stairs. ‘I’ll check upstairs,’ he said.
‘No, we stay together.’
‘Has anybody told you you’re too serious? There’s no one here, lets confirm it as quickly as we can and go. Our shift is over and I’m dying for a cold beer.’
Lucy turned around and pointed the beam of her flashlight directly in Oakley’s face with a look which made Oakley take a step backwards.
‘You’re not going to hit me are you?’ he asked.
‘I’m seriously considering it,’ Lucy responded. She turned back around and started walking down the hallway. ‘Go on, quickly check upstairs and let’s go.’
Oakley walked up the stairs. Lucy could hear his footsteps and minor creaks from the stairs as she reached the entrance to the would-be kitchen. She poked her head inside and checked it. It was empty. At the back of it was another doorless doorway which led outside into the garden. She could now hear Oakley’s footsteps directly above her. She crossed the empty room and stepped outside into the garden. There was a completed and padlocked shed at the very back of the garden and nothing else. She stepped back inside the house and heard her name shouted by Oakley from upstairs.
‘What is it?!’ she shouted back.
‘Come up!’
She hurried across the room, down the corridor and up the stairs. She checked the two rooms on the first floor. Oakley wasn’t in either of them.
‘Where are you?’ she called out.
‘Up here,’ Oakley responded from the second floor.
She crossed the landing and made her way up the second flight of stairs. Oakley stood waiting at the top of the staircase.
‘What is it?’ she asked as she reached him.
‘In here,’ he said and led her into the second of the three rooms on the second floor.
She walked into the room and stood next to Oakley. Her eyes widened upon seeing what Oakley’s flashlight was illuminating. Sat against the wall at the back of the room surrounded by a circular pool of blood was a motionless, fully clothed woman, with her feet tied with rope. She had her hands by her sides with visible slits in both her wrists.
‘I think she’s dead. This is the first time I’ve seen a dead body,’ Oakley said. ‘I guess the man wasn’t a time-wasting imbecile after all.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Lucy said and rushed over, careful not to step in the blood which pooled around her. She leaned over to check for her pulse. There was none. ‘Yeah, she’s dead.’

The crime scene examiners accompanied by two uniformed officers were first to arrive at the scene fifteen minutes later. Lucy and Oakley advised the senior crime scene examiner of the route they’d taken in the house so they were aware of the areas of the crime scene they’d possibly contaminated. The senior examiner and his team set up temporary lights and commenced documenting the crime scene while Lucy and Oakley, along with the two other uniformed officers, remained outside. It was another half an