Race to the Kill Read online

  Race to the Kill

  HELEN CADBURY

  Dedicated to the memory of Sue Matthews

  friend, musician, librarian

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BY HELEN CADBURY

  COPYRIGHT

  PROLOGUE

  Sarah

  The smell of newly laid tarmac gets stronger as she gets closer, until it eliminates all the other scents of late afternoon on a hot June day. She carries a bottle of water, straight from the fridge. Beads of water coat the plastic and run over her fingers. The lazy turn of the concrete mixer, grit hurling against its sides, slows and stops. He’s seen her coming. He wipes his hands on the back of his trousers and his eyes dance with a smile. She hesitates, unsure whether she should cross the trench, lined with orange and yellow cables. She holds out the bottle, but he won’t be able to reach it from the other side. She is watching a bead of sweat run down his neck from behind his ear. It trickles along his clavicle and down the centre of his chest where it soaks into a stain on his vest.

  He steps over the trench, his legs longer than hers, and lands right in front of her, teetering on her side, right on the edge. She can smell him now, see the thin red blood vessels lining the whites of his eyes. He’s too close. She holds the bottle of water against her chest, as if it will protect her. His mouth is open, showing his broken teeth. The muscles along his arms are taut as he reaches his sinewy hands out, like a hawk’s talons.

  Half a second before he touches her shoulders, she screams, and the sound bounces off the breeze-block wall beyond the trench. It echoes off the solid mass of the building behind her. His face changes and his grip tightens, as if he’s going to shake her. A door opens, and she hears feet at the top of the metal fire escape. She is still screaming, trying to push him off, but she is not strong enough. This time, though, someone is coming to rescue her.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Friday night

  The petrol gauge had been nudging red for nearly an hour when PC Sean Denton finally persuaded his partner, PC Gavin Wentworth, to pull into the petrol station close to the Chasebridge estate. Gav stayed behind the wheel, while Sean got out to fill the car. Beyond the spot-lit petrol pumps the woods loomed in the dark. It was just after midnight. Fuel glugged into the empty tank and an owl hooted somewhere over the rough fields. The heat of the day had evaporated and Sean wished he’d put his jacket on.

  He returned the nozzle to the pump and went to pay at the window. He asked the young lad on duty to get him a couple of bags of crisps and a can of pop. Pocketing the receipt for the petrol, he handed over a five pound note for the snacks. The cashier’s eyes darted up from the money, over Sean’s shoulder. A flicker of white in the reinforced glass was enough to make Sean spin round, one hand on his baton. But it was just a woman, dishevelled and pinch-faced, with greasy bobbed hair. Probably no more than thirty, but looking fifty. She took a step back, startled. She’d have to be desperate to try and rob a police officer in full view of the cashier and a police vehicle, so what was her game? She covered her open mouth with the sleeve of her dirty-brown jumper and began to cry.

  ‘All right,’ Sean said. ‘Do you want to tell me what’s happened?’

  She gulped a breath.

  ‘You’ve got to come,’ she said.

  She reached out and grabbed his wrist. He could have broken her hold, but he didn’t want to drop the crisps and the can of pop. Besides, there was no strength in her fingers.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Gav was out of the car and walking towards them.

  He felt her grip loosen as Gav approached and pulled his arm away, but she wasn’t going to let him go that easily. Her fingers darted out and grabbed the sleeve of his shirt.

  ‘You’ve got to come with me!’

  Her voice cracked, the volume out of proportion with how close they were standing.

  ‘Now then, why don’t you let go of my colleague, love, and we’ll see how we can help you?’ Gav said.

  She took no notice and tried to drag Sean towards the road.

  ‘You have to come!’

  Gav didn’t try to talk her round a second time. He might have been pushing for retirement, but he still had the moves. Before she knew what had happened, the woman had lost her grip on Sean and found herself up against the window of the garage shop, Gav’s hands firmly on her shoulders.

  ‘Now, if you have something to tell us,’ he said, ‘I suggest you spit it out, and then we can all go about our business. But if you lay one more filthy little finger on my colleague, I will arrest you for assaulting a police officer.’

  She looked at Sean for support.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Sean said.

  ‘Mary.’

  ‘Mary what?’

  ‘Just Mary.’

  ‘Okay, Mary, why don’t you come and sit in the back of the car and tell us what the problem is?’

  She shook her head violently and a gobbet of snot dislodged from her runny nose. Gav stepped back to avoid catching it in the face, and Mary seized the opportunity to pull away from him. She ran to the edge of the garage forecourt, but hovered there, unwilling to leave.

  ‘Well?’ Gav said. ‘Are you going after her or shall I?’

  Sean sighed. ‘Can we get her in the car?’

  ‘Do we have to? She stinks.’

  ‘What do you suggest?’ Sean said.

  ‘She wants you, Sean. She wants you bad.’

  ‘Knock it off.’

  ‘Well, maybe you should go with her,’ Gav said, ‘and see what’s up?’

  ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘I’ll follow in the car. Go on.’

  Sean looked at Mary, standing there, dark eyes watching him under her greasy fringe.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let me find out where we’re going first.’

  He walked over to her, while Gav hung back by the kiosk window.

  He heard the cashier say: ‘Does your mate want his change?’ and looked back to see Gav pocketing the money. Nice one. He’d have to remember to get it off him later.

  ‘Where are we
going, Mary?’

  ‘The old school.’

  She turned away, setting off across the dual carriageway with a limping gait that didn’t appear to slow her down.

  ‘Gav!’ Sean called. ‘Chasebridge School, the old site, not the Academy.’

  ‘I’ll be right behind you.’

  Sean knew that wouldn’t be entirely true. Gavin would have to drive to the next roundabout and double back, then he’d be restricted to the vehicle access to the estate, while he and Mary would be taking the shorter, pedestrian route, between the flats, on cracked paved paths studded with bollards.

  ‘I’ll be on the radio,’ Sean said.

  ‘Don’t worry, she won’t hurt you.’

  Gav waved him off and went back to the car.

  Sean had to run to catch up with Mary. He tried to get her to talk, but she walked on, head down against the light rain that had begun to fall. They came to the four tower blocks at the top of the estate. Out of habit Sean glanced up to the second floor of Eagle Mount One, where his father lived. The windows of Jack Denton’s flat were all but dark. Just a light in the kitchen. Maybe Chloe, his half-sister, was still awake. Sean felt a pang of guilt. He hadn’t been to see his dad for nearly two weeks. The old man had been in and out of hospital since Easter and although there was no love lost between them, Sean still felt he should do the right thing and go round occasionally.

  ‘Shit!’ He’d trodden in a deep puddle, caused by a faulty pipe on the corner of Eagle Mount Two. The muddy water seeped over the top his boot and into his sock. After the run of hot days they’d had, he could only imagine where this water had come from. It definitely wasn’t rainwater.

  Mary turned to check he was still following.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m still here,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you want to tell me what’s happening, do you? I could have some backup ready, if I had a clue what we’re actually doing.’

  ‘I ran out when it started,’ she said. ‘I didn’t see.’

  ‘What started?’

  She looked away and carried on walking.

  ‘Something started in the old school?’ He said. ‘Is that where you’ve been living?’

  Her pace slowed and he came alongside her. The warmth of her body gave off the gagging scent of unwashed skin, tobacco and alcohol: the cocktail odour of the rough sleeper.

  ‘Mary, you need to tell me. Is someone in danger?’

  ‘If you’re quick you can run.’

  ‘And if you’re not?’

  She winced at the question. ‘You have to pay.’

  He reached for his radio.

  ‘Victor Charlie Four Three.’

  ‘Go ahead, Four Three.’

  ‘I’m heading for the site of the old Chasebridge School, Disraeli Road. We’ve been stopped by a member of the public. Possible incident, risk to persons sleeping rough in the school premises. Proceeding on foot, with the informant. Victor Charlie Three One is en route, via the main entrance. We may need backup.’

  ‘Yes, received, Victor Charlie Four Three,’ the call-handler’s voice crackled out of the radio.

  He saw the face that went with it. Lisa-Marie, dark hair, big brown eyes. They’d had a quick cuddle at an office party when he was still a PCSO. It came back to him, with a blush, every time he heard her voice.

  ‘I’ll update when I’m closer,’ he said, forcing his mind back on the job.

  ‘Other patrols are committed, Victor Charlie Four Three. There’s a big fight in town. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.’

  Great, Sean thought. We’re on our own.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Friday night

  Chloe had no memory of her father as a child. She might have seen him a hundred times and never realised it. He was one of many men who drank in the pub on the estate, one of several who’d been her mother’s boyfriend over the years. She sometimes wondered if her mother even knew which one of the men she served drinks to in the Chasebridge Tavern had got her pregnant. Chloe used to ask her often enough, but she always got a different answer. Her mum liked to tell Chloe that her father was a sailor, or sometimes a soldier. Once he was a travelling salesman, and on another day, a fairground worker. By the time she was in secondary school, Chloe knew these were just stories, but she never understood why her mother made them up. Now Jack Denton was real, and her mother long dead, it occurred to Chloe that her mother had known all along, but wouldn’t have wished the real Jack on her daughter. Not that he was a bad person; he was just a drunk. Had been a drunk, she mentally corrected herself. Jack was sober now. He was also seriously ill with cirrhosis of the liver.

  Chloe fumbled for the bedside lamp, trying not to knock it off the suitcase that stood in for a table. The first time she’d suggested to Jack she might occasionally stay over, this room had been so full of junk that she hadn’t realised there was a bed in it. He’d grudgingly let her clear enough space to reveal the old bed-base, which once belonged to her half-brother. It was so narrow she’d struggled to find a mattress to fit it, until one of the girls at work gave her a child’s mattress she was throwing out. Chloe’s feet already hung over the end if she stretched full length, but after a while, she’d decided it wasn’t worth paying rent anywhere else, so she’d given up her own flat and moved her few possessions in here.

  It was 2 a.m. and she wondered what had woken her. She lay back on the pillow and listened. Jack coughed in his room across the narrow hallway. The cough came again and tailed off into a chesty, wheezing moan. Chloe sat up. This time the cough and the moan were followed by another sound, a high-pitched whine like a child’s cry.

  She got out of bed, pushing open the door of Jack’s room, and let the light from the hallway spill across the floor to his bed. She’d left him propped up on the pillows, the way the community nurses had shown her, but he’d slipped sideways and lay bent over, crooked, his head tipped towards the edge of the bed, knees drawn up. His face was wet with tears.

  ‘Aagh!’ He clutched at the edge of the duvet with his good hand, while the twisted fist of his old injury flailed in the air.

  ‘Where are your tablets?’ she said, turning on the overhead light.

  She could see now what had woken her. In his pain, he’d swiped everything off the top of the bedside cabinet. The water glass was shattered, shards spread over the carpet, and the cardboard packet of painkillers lay in a pool of water.

  She didn’t know what to do first. The fog of sleep was still with her, slowing her movements, until he cried out again and she snapped into action.

  ‘Come on, now,’ she said. ‘Let’s get you back up on those pillows. This must be the stomach acid the nurse talked about. You need to be sitting up.’

  She lifted him under his arms. Even though his body was tense, Chloe was strong, and it required very little effort to move him. She settled him back on the pillows and stroked the back of his hand. His breathing came in fast, sudden gasps.

  ‘I’m going to get you another glass of water and then you can have a tablet. Will you be all right?’

  He gave an almost imperceptible nod. His eyes were closed and his jaw was tight. She knew he hated to show how much it hurt, and would be ashamed of his tears. She picked up a box of tissues from where they had fallen and placed one in his clenched fist.

  ‘Back in a moment,’ she said.

  She took the soggy packet of tablets into the kitchen, found a tea towel to pat them dry, and reached under the sink for the dustpan and brush.

  A terrible shout from the bedroom startled her and she ran out of the kitchen, dustpan and brush in hand.

  Jack was lying on the floor, next to the bed, clutching his stomach.

  ‘Jack!’ she cried.

  She reached under his armpits to lift him, but it was harder this time. He was struggling against the pain and against her. Her hand slipped underneath him to get a better hold and she felt a sharp sting. Broken glass in the side of her hand. Crouching over him, she managed to get him up, onto the
edge of the bed, and dragged him back towards the pillows. There was something under her foot and she pulled away, just before the glass punctured the sole of her foot. She realised Jack hadn’t been so lucky. A thin line of red on his arm swelled with fresh blood, pulsing to the surface. There was more blood on the duvet cover, but she couldn’t tell if it was his or hers.

  ‘I’m going to call an ambulance, Jack, can you hear me? I need you to hold on, try not to move.’

  His eyes were no longer focusing and his head lolled back.

  ‘Stay with me, Jack, don’t pass out on me. Jack? Dad?’

  A flicker of his eyelashes. Call me Dad, he’d said, the first time they’d met, and she’d struggled with it, pretending she hadn’t heard. She’d called him by his name ever since, and although in her head she thought ‘my dad’ or ‘my father’, whenever she opened her mouth it was always Jack. His eyes closed.

  ‘Dad?’ she said.

  His body went slack, but the eyes flickered open again. They stayed open, red-rimmed and watery, but looking at her, focusing. He was still there.

  ‘Lie still, okay? I’m going to get my phone from my bag, then I’m going to sit here and call the ambulance. I’m going to stay right by your side until it comes.’

  ‘Say it again,’ he whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Call me Dad.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Friday night, Saturday morning

  The playing fields had been sold off as soon as the school roll dropped below five hundred. There’d been a bit of a protest, but the local authority said it had no choice. A new housing development was built where two-thirds of the football pitch used to be. Private houses, with their backs turned away from the main part of the Chasebridge estate, clustered around closes and cul-de-sacs. A high fence was built on the boundary. Three years later, the school closed for good, and the remaining staff and pupils reluctantly joined the new Academy, on the other side of The Groves. More fencing appeared, and the ground-floor windows were boarded up. Sean had hated most of his lessons here, but he’d had some good times too. Like everyone who’d grown up in the area, he felt a belated sense of loyalty to Chasebridge Community High School, now it was falling to pieces and awaiting demolition.