Pictures of lily di angu.., p.1
Pictures of Lily: (DI Angus Henderson 11), page 1
Pictures of Lily
Iain Cameron
Contents
Title Page
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-TWO
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
FIFTY-FIVE
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SEVEN
FIFTY-EIGHT
FIFTY-NINE
SIXTY
SIXTY-ONE
SIXTY-TWO
SIXTY-THREE
SIXTY-FOUR
SIXTY-FIVE
SIXTY-SIX
SIXTY-SEVEN
SIXTY-EIGHT
SIXTY-NINE
SEVENTY
SEVENTY-ONE
SEVENTY-TWO
SEVENTY-THREE
SEVENTY-FOUR
SEVENTY-FIVE
SEVENTY-SIX
SEVENTY-SEVEN
SEVENTY-EIGHT
SEVENTY-NINE
EIGHTY
EIGHTY-ONE
EIGHTY-TWO
EIGHTY-THREE
EIGHTY-FOUR
EIGHTY-FIVE
About the Author
Books by Iain Cameron
Copyright © 2022 Iain Cameron
ISBN:
The right of Iain Cameron to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the copyright owner.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
To find out more about the author, visit the website:
www.iain-cameron.com
For Julie and Adrian.
Thank you for your unwavering support
ONE
Nine forty-five, Sunday night. Lily Osborne would usually be found snuggling up to Danny on the sofa, watching a movie on Netflix. Tonight she was standing on a street corner in the middle of Brighton waiting for someone she didn’t know.
If she’d been with Danny, her mood would be calm and dreamy, thinking about the life they would have when she finally sold her flat and they could move in together. Her mood tonight, as she stood alone, was anything but calm. The anger she felt on discovering what was happening, and the things people were saying about her online, was enough to make her head explode.
The town was surprisingly busy for such a chilly April evening, a cooling breeze zipping through the streets leading up from the seafront. A group of four lads came around the corner. They looked like out-of-towners; a long weekend at the seaside getting pissed, eating junk food, and chatting up any women they came across.
‘Hello, gorgeous,’ one of them said. They stopped walking. ‘Waiting for us, were you?’
They weren’t drunk, not yet, but well on their way. She gave them a withering look, not interested in engaging in banter.
‘C’mon, join us, you’ll have a great night.’
‘No. You go and enjoy yourselves.’
They walked off, one of their number chiding the speaker for his naff line in chat. She wasn’t frightened to be standing there. She’d encountered far more fearsome people in her job, and two clicks on her phone, which her left hand was resting on, would connect her to the emergency services.
Minutes later, she was beginning to think she’d been stood up, when the type of car she had been told to look out for, a Mercedes 4x4, pulled up in front of her. She walked over, bent down and took a look at the driver through the open passenger window. He wore a leather jacket, had a big nose, and his hair had been recently cut short, shaved at the side. She had never seen him before, but when he beckoned her inside, she knew this had to be the right car. She reached for the door handle and opened the door.
‘Are you Ivan?’
‘Of course.’
‘Have you got it?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I have it. Get in car and shut bloody door, it’s freezing.’
The accent was East European; Slavic or Russian, she guessed. The work she did brought her into contact with many nationalities, plenty from Eastern Europe, but always on the phone.
She climbed into the car and it took off.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I do not want to have discussion here, on busy street. What if you drop documents and they fall on road?’ he said, grinning. She noticed a gap between his two front teeth.
‘Okay.’
‘I know quiet place where we can talk freely. When we are done, I will bring you back here. Okay?’
They drove east along the coast road. The moon appeared through thick cloud for a moment, leaving the sea glistening and making her feel less alone. Passing through Saltdean and Peacehaven should have done the same, but the residents looked like they dropped the shutters from 9:30pm onwards, as they both felt like ghost towns.
A short distance outside Peacehaven, they slowed and turned right, onto a road she imagined only locals knew about. It was single-track, bordered with long, tough grass typical of seaside places, and with only the occasional house. The people who lived here, she mused, had to be recluses, those wanting to get away from it all, or people who couldn’t get enough of the sea.
With no street lights, her view was restricted to whatever the car headlights illuminated. After a few minutes, he bumped the big car up on the grass verge, selected ‘park’ and switched off the engine. He lowered the front windows of the car, instantly robbing the interior of its enveloping warmth, and lit a cigarette.
The car was quiet. She could hear the sound of her breathing, the sizzling paper of the cigarette as he took a deep drag, the creaking of the car body as it cooled, and the crash of the waves as they splashed against the shore in the distance.
‘Did you do what I asked?’ he said. He took a long pull before nipping the end of the cigarette out of the car window. He put the remaining piece in his pocket. It struck her as curious; the behaviour of a homeless man, not the driver of an expensive Mercedes 4x4.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘exactly as you told me.’
‘Have your colleagues said anything?’
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Maybe you too far down business ladder to notice?’’
‘No,’ she said, trying to keep frustration from her voice, but with her patience wearing thin at this strange game of Q&A. ‘Any problems would have been brought to my attention.’
‘Okay, just making sure. I checked the data from our side. Everything working as it should.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘Give me back burner phone.’
She reached into her bag and handed him the cheap Nokia that had been sent to her several weeks before.
‘You have fulfilled your side of the bargain. I will now fulfil mine.’
He leaned over behind her and removed something from the pocket at the back of her seat. Expecting it to be photographs, or a memory stick, she was flabbergasted when she saw what it was: a gun with a silencer attached to the barrel.
He pointed it at her head, and before her mouth could shape into a scream, he fired.
TWO
A phone trilled on the bedside table. He stretched over and tried to loosen the fug clouding his brain while listening to the operator at Lewes Control relaying the details. ‘I’m on my way,’ he said, terminating the call.
Kelly Jackson stirred in the bed beside him. ‘What is it Angus, work?’
Detective Inspector Angus Henderson got out of bed and began dressing. ‘A body’s been found near the beach in Peacehaven by a late-night dog walker.’
He heard Kelly reaching across the bed to look at her watch. ‘God almighty, it’s one thirty in the morning. Who walks their dog at this time of the night?’
‘I’ll tell you once I’ve had a chance to meet them.’ He leaned over and kissed her. ‘Thanks for a great weekend.’
Her arm snaked around his neck. ‘I had a terrific one to
‘I’ll call you this evening,’ he said, extricating himself and walking to the bedroom door.
‘No, you won’t, you’re just like all the others,’ she said, smiling.
‘If you can joke at this late hour, no way will you get back to sleep. You should do some marking, or writing. Catch you later.’
Kelly was a Sociology and Criminology professor at the University of Sussex. Fortunately for her, Monday morning was reserved for the marking of exam scripts, and she didn’t need to make an appearance at the university until 3pm.
Henderson walked out to his car. Kelly lived in a small enclave of three houses with their backs to a forest. The stillness and quiet of the house changed to a cacophony of hooting and cawing made by various night animals and birds. It was only thanks to the double glazing fitted to all three houses that their nightly activity didn’t keep the residents awake.
Tuning into Radio 4 as he drove south from West Hoathly towards Peacehaven, there weren’t the usual lively magazine and debate programmes Henderson liked to listen to. Instead, it was a selection of programmes first broadcast on the World Service. By the time he reached the crime scene, he was well briefed on food shortages in Northern Ethiopia, the American President’s attitude to Europe, and Israel’s deployment of the Stuxnet computer monitoring worm against its enemies.
Following the directions he’d been given, Henderson turned off the main coastal road onto a single-track road he would have missed even in daylight. It was bumpy and pitch-black, and for several moments he believed he had taken a wrong turning, before spotting a battery of arc lights illuminating a large section of scrubland in the distance. The track had a strange name, The Hwy, sounding more like a Chinese rock band than a road in Sussex.
Henderson parked the car behind a long line of vehicles, all banked up at the side in an attempt to leave enough room for another vehicle to pass. From the boot, he donned a protective oversuit and shoe coverings. He walked past patrol cars, the SOCO van, Major Crime Team pool cars, and the Austin Healey owned by pathologist Grafton Rawlings. The main hub of activity lay straight ahead.
‘Morning, gov,’ Detective Sergeant Carol Walters said, as he headed towards her. ‘Although I’m not sure if this is still Sunday night or Monday morning. Did this call-out spoil a good night’s sleep?’
‘Morning, Carol. It certainly did. I was staying at Kelly’s.’
‘It did for me too. I was out with Nick–’
‘My God, if we could see the moon I swear it would be blue. You went out twice with the same guy? This has to be some sort of record.’
She shrugged. ‘What can I say, I have high standards. Did you watch the marathon?’
‘We were there, as spectators not participants, I might add. We saw Phil and Sol.’
‘How did they get on?’
‘They stayed together throughout the race and did it in about three and a half hours, which is an excellent time.’ He nodded towards the crime scene. ‘What’s the story here?’
‘I’ve only just got here myself. Better ask Grafton.’
Henderson walked up to the pathologist and bent down close to him.
‘Morning Angus, it’s good to see you,’ Rawlings said.
‘Good to see you too, although I would rather it was inside a pub than out here.’
Henderson looked at the victim. A young woman, mid to late twenties, with straight dark hair and a pretty face, beautiful perhaps, except for the bullet hole in the middle of her forehead.
‘Is this her only injury?’ he asked.
Henderson couldn’t see any obvious bruising or marks, although her clothes could be hiding them.
‘It appears to be,’ Rawlings said, running his gloved fingers around the victim’s shoulders. ‘Two things which I think will be of interest to you: She wasn’t killed here, for reasons which I’ll put in my report I believe she was shot up there,’ he said, nodding at another smaller, screened-off area about ten metres up ahead.
‘Okay.’
‘From the marks around the bullet wound, I would say she was shot at close range, either in the area up there,’ he said with a nod, ‘or in a car, which then reversed back here and her body dumped out.’
Henderson tried to visualise this. The driver would have little choice but to reverse back, as he couldn’t see any obvious place to turn up ahead. The body lay close to a gate, allowing a vehicle to turn.
‘And the second thing?’
‘She’s not wearing any underwear. We found her pants near the other scene.’
‘Approximate time of death?’
Rawlings looked at his watch. ‘I would say between nine and midnight, Sunday night.’
Henderson stood; he’d seen enough. ‘Thanks Grafton. It should make for an interesting P-M.’
‘You could be right.’
THREE
Danny Walker opened his eyes and realised with some disappointment that Jennifer Lawrence wasn’t holding his hand as they walked along the beach. He sat up and shook himself awake. The credits were rolling on the film he had been watching, which annoyed him as he had wanted to see it and had obviously missed quite a chunk. However, if it was so exciting that he fell asleep for what must have been over an hour, perhaps it was better he hadn’t watched it after all.
This was becoming a habit, falling asleep in front of the television, and it worried him. He was a doctor, an anaesthetist, although some of his patients didn’t know he had to complete his doctor’s training before specialising in anaesthesia. He knew it wasn’t an age thing as he was only thirty-three, but maybe it was the bottle of wine he had shared with Lily earlier this evening, or the long hours he spent at work. What if it was something more serious, like ME, sleep apnoea, or a stroke?
He flicked through the genres on the screen until he found comedy, knowing a quick burst of Al Murray or Jimmy Carr would be enough to stop the paranoia. Sure enough, by the time Micky Flanagan had completed his routine about girlfriends, mothers-in-law and tattoos, all thoughts of impending doom were erased.
He looked at the time. It was after two in the morning. Way past his normal bedtime when due to work a morning shift, but he had Monday off, so he was making the most of Sunday night. He only wished Lily had been there to share it. She had gone out to see an old friend who needed help, and must have gone back to her own place.
She often did this when he was on earlies, as her flat was in Holland Road and closer to Brighton, so it was cheaper for an Uber, quicker to walk, and nearer her work. It was so she didn’t interrupt his sleep with a demand for sex, or with her tossing and turning, and trips in the middle of the night to the bathroom for a glass of water. He required a solid seven or eight hours, or he would be like a half-shut knife, while Lily could get by on five or six and still have the energy of a newborn lamb.
He walked to the window, leaned on the windowsill and looked out. From the first floor of his converted flat in Ventnor Villas in Hove, he had sweeping views over Church Road, the main east-west thoroughfare, and down to the seafront. It wasn’t a surprise to see it empty. Any other day of the week would be different, but on Sunday things quietened down early.
On his day off, he was scheduled to visit his parents. They were self-effacing and diffident, but he knew the sacrifice they had made to send him to medical school, and although they could brush it off casually, he couldn’t. His father wasn’t highly paid as a credit manager for an engineering company, and his mother was a professional flute player whose assignments were lucrative, but sporadic and unpredictable.
In many ways, he would have expected to have been on the receiving end of his sister’s ire, as his career had been prioritised over hers, but she loved being a primary school teacher and held no grudge against him. It was a pity she wouldn’t be there tomorrow, but he would see her soon.
Picking up his phone he looked at the notifications. Jo Barnett, a colleague from work, had posted another funny video in their private WhatsApp group. The hour or so Danny had spent in the company of Micky Flanagan must have in some way primed him, as he found it funnier than usual. He tapped a response and sent it.
He looked at his texts. A regular one from the Administration Team advising him of the surgical operations he was scheduled to attend the following week. Another reminding him of the diversity programme the hospital was running. It was a big issue in hospitals, as many consultants were white and privately educated while nurses, auxiliaries, and porters more reflected the ethnic mix of the hospital’s environs.
