Scared to Death: A gripping crime thriller you won’t be able to put down. Kate Medina
by a stranger. The contemporary French idiom for a girl having lost her virginity is “Elle avoit vu le coup”, which translates literally as “She has seen the wolf”.’
Reaching an arm out, Jessie jammed her finger on the ‘off’ switch. Silence. Not even birdsong; too early yet for the dawn chorus. Curling on to her side, she closed her eyes and tugged the duvet up around her ears, trying to tilt back into sleep. But she was awake now, her mind a buzz of jetlag-fuelled, pent-up energy. May as well get up and face the day.
Throwing off the duvet, she padded into the bathroom to have a shower, catching her reflection in the huge mirror above the sink that she had erroneously thought it a good idea to install after reading a home décor magazine at the dentist that had waxed lyrical about mirrors opening up small spaces. The harsh electric ceiling lights, another poor idea – same magazine – washed the face looking back at her ghostly grey-white, blue eyes so pale they were nearly translucent, black hair limp and unkempt, a cartoon version of Snow White with a stinking hangover. Jesus, Jessie, only you could spend twelve weeks in the Middle East and still come back looking as if you’ve been bleached. Coffee was the answer, and lots of it.
Downstairs, her cottage’s sitting room was show-home spotless, exactly as she had left it: a cream sofa and two matching chairs separated by a reclaimed oak coffee table bare of clutter, fitted white-painted shelves empty of books and ornaments, the sole splash of colour, a vase of fresh daffodils that Ahmose must have left on the coffee table to welcome her home. Herself, by a long way, the messiest thing in the room.
Her gaze found the two framed photographs on the mantelpiece. Looking at Jamie, at his smiley face, all teeth and gums, lips ringed by a smear of chocolate ice cream, she felt the familiar emptiness in her chest, as if under her ribcage was nothing but air. Pushing away thoughts of him, of her past, she padded into the kitchen and made herself a coffee – strong, topped up with lots of full-fat milk, straight from the farm, that Ahmose must have put in her fridge yesterday, along with the bread and butter, lined side by side on the top shelf, an identical space between each item, Ahmose trained now to defer to her extreme sense of order.
She put the kettle back on its stand, straightened the handle flush with the wall, and then deliberately gave it a nudge, knocking it off-kilter. No hiss from the electric suit. No immediate urge to realign it. Not yet. Baby steps, she knew, but progress all the same. Progress she had worked hard, before leaving for her foreign tour, to achieve. Progress that she was determined to maintain, now, coming home.
Unlocking the back door, she stepped out into the garden, glancing up at Ahmose’s bedroom window as she did so. Lights off, curtains closed, still asleep as any sensible person who wasn’t a shift worker or in the Army should be at this pre-dawn hour. Moving slowly across the dark lawn, she inhaled deeply. The air was cool and clean, carrying a faint scent of water on cut grass, the lawn crisp and damp beneath her bare soles. At the bottom of the garden, she settled herself on to the wooden fence and gazed across the farmer’s field. The sunrise was still only a narrow strip of fire on the horizon, the sky above inky blue-black, the somnolent sheep in the field hummocks of barely visible grey, the spring lambs, cleaner, brighter, lying tight against their mothers’ stomachs for warmth.
Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep …
A peaceful pre-dawn, bearing the promise of a beautiful morning.
Home. She was home. Home safe. So why did she still have this odd sensation of emptiness in her chest? Jamie, yes – but something else too. What did she have to worry about? Nothing. She had nothing, or did she?
‘Midnight?’ Detective Inspector Bobby ‘Marilyn’ Simmons snapped. ‘You first noticed the pram at midnight?’ Tugging up his suit jacket sleeve, he tapped his watch with a nicotine-stained index finger. ‘As in midnight eight hours ago?’ His eyes blazed as he looked at the prim, mousy-haired woman in front of him who was clutching a mug of coffee emblazoned with the words Fill with coffee and nobody gets hurt and staring at him as if he was the devil. At least she had the good grace to blush.
‘The baby was asleep.’ She folded her arms defensively across her bust and tipped back on her heels. It was obvious that she was uncomfortable with his proximity, but he was in no mood to take a step back, out of her personal space, and make it easier for her. ‘I thought that the pram was empty.’
Marilyn – a nickname he had acquired on his first day with Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes, the bi-county joint command serious crimes investigation team, thanks to an uncanny resemblance to the ageing American rocker Marilyn Manson – sighed and rubbed a hand over his mismatched eyes. He had a persistent, throbbing headache, which he knew was well-deserved payback for last night’s 2 a.m.’er, knowledge that didn’t make dealing with it any easier. He could murder a cup of that coffee she was clutching. He was also fully aware that he was being an arsehole, could feel disapproval bleeding off Detective Sergeant Sarah Workman standing next to him, her lips pursed, he could tell even without looking. But he wasn’t feeling generous enough to give anyone a break this morning.
The Accident and Emergency waiting room was standing-room only: rows of blue vinyl-upholstered seats, every one of them occupied, a tidal wave of groans, coughs, hawks and the occasional deep-throated retch submerging their conversation. A vending machine was jammed against the wall the other side of the entrance door from the chairs, dispensing fizzy drinks, crisps and chocolate bars to the sick. The great unwashed. The last time he had set foot in a hospital, Southampton General, was four months ago, to collect Dr Jessie Flynn – who he’d worked with on a murder case late last year and fished out of Chichester Harbour, hypothermic and with a gunshot wound to the thigh – and drive her home. That had been a serene experience compared to this one. This A & E department made the rave he’d been at last night feel positively Zen.
‘As you can see, we’re an extremely busy Accident and Emergency department, Detective Inspector,’ the receptionist – Janet, her plastic name badge read – informed him. ‘And occasionally things get missed.’
Marilyn pulled a face. ‘Remind me not to come here when I’m sick. If you can’t spot a bloody baby, you’ve got no chance diagnosing disease.’
‘That day may come sooner than you think.’ Her voice rose in pitch, wobbled. ‘Cancer, I’d say.’
Marilyn raised an eyebrow. ‘Excuse me?’
‘The smell. Smoke. You reek of it.’ She waved a hand in front of her face. ‘You’d be doing yourself, and us, a good turn if you gave up. Now if that’s all, Detective Inspector, I’ll be getting back to work. We are one the best-performing A & E departments in the country with one of the lowest mortality rates and I’d like to do my bit to keep it that way.’ Turning on the sole of one squealing Dr Scholl, she slap-slapped her way down the corridor.
Marilyn glanced at Workman. ‘That went well, Sergeant.’
DS Workman sighed. ‘Shall I get forensics in here, sir?’
‘It’s a baby, Workman, not a corpse. We just need to find the next of kin, pronto.’
‘I’ve been calling the parents. The father left his wallet under the pram. No joy on his home or mobile numbers.’
The air was getting to Marilyn: a stifling smorgasbord of antiseptic, body odour, vomit and the rusty smell of dried blood, all cooked to perfection in the unseasonally warm spring sunlight he could feel cutting through the glass sliding doors behind him. The temperature must be hitting seventy, he thought, despite the best efforts of the air-conditioning unit groaning in