No Kiss For The Devil rgafp-5 Read online

  No Kiss For The Devil

  ( Riley Gavin and Frank Palmer - 5 )

  Adrian Magson

  Adrian Magson

  No Kiss For The Devil

  Prologue

  The woman arrived in a black VW Golf GTi. Her approach was watched by a man on the deserted fourth floor of an anonymous office building just off London’s Euston Road. As the vehicle turned into the car park below, he took out a mobile and pressed a button. He allowed it to ring once before cutting the connection.

  The woman who stepped out of the car was tall, with blonde hair, neatly cut. Smart suit, dark court shoes. Professional. A flash of white slip peeped from beneath the hem of her skirt as she reached in for something on the passenger seat. When she ducked back out, she was holding a burgundy leather briefcase with a shoulder strap and gold buckles. She turned to look up at the office building, hand raised to shield her eyes against the setting sun, but the man knew she wouldn’t be able to see him from down there.

  A movement behind him showed in the reflection from the window.

  ‘She’s here.’ He spoke in careful English, trying to flatten his tongue and get the words out of the base of his mouth where he felt his origins always betrayed him. ‘Are we still secure?’ His words were lost across the vast, empty floor space.

  ‘Yes, Boss. Nobody will bother us.’

  ‘Good. Take her to the basement. Make sure you get her briefcase.’

  The other nodded and moved away. Moments later, a brief snatch of conversation echoed along the corridor, then faded. Elsewhere, silence returned as the building emptied for the day.

  The man, who used the name Grigori, walked over to a desk, the only item of furniture in sight. On it was a cardboard folder, a touch telephone and a plastic in-tray. The last two were covered in dust. The folder contained everything he had needed to know about the woman: name, age, background, friends, past jobs, past loves.

  Past everything.

  He fed the folder into the mouth of a portable shredder on the floor beside the desk, and watched as the cardboard and its contents became strips of spaghetti. As of that moment, its subject ceased to be of interest to him.

  Or, more importantly, a threat.

  He reached into an inside jacket pocket and took out a sheet of paper and a photograph. The paper was a brief biography, the subject of which was — like the woman downstairs — a freelance reporter. She also had no ties, no close family and no obvious corporate loyalties. Another loner.

  He preferred loners. They were uncomplicated.

  He studied the photo; it might almost have been the same woman. Not as thin, perhaps, but the same blonde hair and pale skin. The same look of self-reliance.

  He returned to the window as the driver of the Golf mounted the steps to the front entrance. Graceful, he thought idly. Elegant, even.

  But a dead woman.

  She just didn’t know it yet.

  1

  ‘You’ll have to leave your car down here.’ The constable was a hunched shape looming out of the darkness. Up close, he looked cold, wet and miserable, and sounded in no mood to argue. His gesture indicated which way she should go, a lane behind him, disappearing into the dark. Further on was a distant glow of arc lights, vehicles and movement, the area around it lost in the vastness of the Essex countryside, thirty miles from London. Radios crackled unseen, the voices snatched by the wind and lost in the night air.

  It was starting to rain again.

  Riley Gavin climbed out of her car and locked the door. She walked away without waiting. If he wanted it moved, he could come and get her.

  She wished she’d put on a thicker coat and more suitable shoes. But the officious phone call that had dragged her from bed at three in the morning had omitted to warn her about the prevailing conditions, nor given any details of why she was needed. It had simply urged her to come, and given her careful directions on how to get there. The lack of information had left her with a feeling of dread, overshadowing any thoughts she might have had brought on by her instincts as a freelance reporter.

  She trudged up the lane towards the lights, skirting the potholes and ruts she could see, fingers mentally crossed against the ones she couldn’t. It had been raining on and off for three days now, a persistent autumn deluge, and the topsoil was spongy and heavy, incapable of absorbing any more water.

  Two men splashed past going the other way, carrying metal cases and muttering about the weather. Both were shrouded from head to toe in white protective suits. Another figure followed, this one in a uniform and peaked cap, dancing across the uneven surface in the wobbling wake of a torch. He was unravelling a roll of scene-of-crime tape as he went, replacing a strip fluttering brokenly amid the bushes bordering the track. He ignored Riley, too intent on his task and keeping his footing on the treacherous surface.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ A voice challenged her and she looked up to see another uniform approaching. A torch beam hit her square on, the glare painful on the eyes.

  She put up a protective hand just as another voice called out from over by the lights, ‘It’s all right. Miss Gavin? Over here.’

  Riley stepped round the constable and decided they must have called out the awkward squad. Or maybe it was the weather making them all tetchy. She found herself alongside a tall figure in a yellow slicker and black rubber boots. He held out an arm to prevent her going too close, and kept himself between her and the focus of lights on a fold in the ground.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ he said, and introduced himself. ‘DI Craig Pell. We need you to make an identification.’ She recognised his voice from the phone. The spread of light gave her an impression of high cheekbones, a confident chin, and a lick of hair plastered across his forehead. His eyes were pools of shadow

  Riley’s stomach lurched at the idea. When he had called, other than giving his rank, name and directions, he had rung off without elaborating. Now she had an instant foreboding.

  Pell checked that her hands were empty, then handed her a white coverall suit. It was the same garment worn by SOCOs — Scene of Crime Officers — to preserve the integrity of the scene. He helped her into it, awkward when she stumbled against him and he had to grab at her shoulder to stop her falling. He mumbled an apology and snatched his hands away as if he’d been stung.

  Riley wondered if he was always so clumsy.

  Once she was zipped up, he handed her some overshoes, then turned and called out to a figure hunched in the hollow. There was an answering grunt and Pell took Riley’s arm and led her forward.

  The scene was nightmarish. They were standing on the edge of a wide, shallow ditch bordered by a tangle of coarse bushes. A canopy had been erected to cover the immediate area, and the ghostly glow of lights gave the canvas the appearance of a large lampshade. The man below was hunched over something on the ground, but Riley couldn’t see what it was.

  ‘Tread between the tapes,’ Pell instructed her. ‘Stop when he tells you. Don’t touch anything you see and don’t take anything out of your pockets.’

  Riley stepped down carefully, feeling the ground soft and slick beneath her feet. She came to a stop when the hunched figure raised a hand. He was muttering to himself, and when he stopped and turned his head, she saw he’d been talking into a small voice recorder. He clicked it off and beckoned her closer, moving crab-like to one side and indicating where she should stand.

  2

  Riley had seen dead bodies before. It was never pleasant, whether death had come by natural or other causes. Each time, she had to steel herself to remain detached. It was never easy, but in the main, she reckoned on being able to hold it together long enough to not make a fool of herself.

  She had a
sense that this one might be different.

  The forensics officer was watching her, eyes in dark pockets of shadow cast by the arc lights. He wore a white suit and over-shoes, like the others, but exuded a different kind of aura; heavier, somehow, as if weighed down by authority or responsibility. He didn’t seem very pleased to see her.

  ‘Take it slowly,’ he said flatly. He glanced past her at Pell and lifted his eyebrows momentarily before adding, ‘Do you recognise her?’

  The woman was lying huddled in the bottom of the ditch, her legs bent and her feet together, shoulders slightly hunched. She could have been asleep or even posing coyly, except that her hands had been taped together at the wrists, the material cutting deep into the skin. Her face was pale and beaded with moisture, wet strands of blonde hair plastered against her skull. Bruising showed on her cheeks and down one side of her throat, and one ear lobe was ripped, a faint staining of red showing where an earring had been torn away.

  Riley guessed the woman was not much older than herself, maybe in her mid-thirties, although it was impossible to be certain. She wore a plain, dark jacket and skirt, with the hem turned up on one slim thigh to reveal a flash of white silk. Her shoes had once been shiny, but like her lower legs, were now smeared with mud. Her fingers were bare, although the glint of a watch showed on her wrist. Her hands looked well cared-for, the nails varnished with a blush of pink, and were splayed out as if somehow wanting to be distanced from what had happened to her body.

  Riley forced herself to look at the woman’s face, passing over the slack mouth to the half-open, dulled eyes. They contained no discernible expression, simply two darker areas in an otherwise bloodless skin. But Riley fancied she could see a pleading glint deep inside, as if asking for something.

  She felt her gut heave and swallowed hard.

  ‘What was done to her?’ she asked finally, eyes on the taped wrists. It was the first thing she could think of, familiar with images from Belfast to Baghdad of torture victims found tied up, as if death alone was not enough.

  The forensics man didn’t answer immediately, but gave her a studied look. He shook his head. ‘It’s too early to tell.’

  ‘Anything?’ It was Pell, shifting about at the top of the slope, restless for an answer.

  It was Riley’s turn to shake her head. Yet there was something chillingly familiar about the woman’s face. But she wasn’t about to commit herself to these men without a moment’s thought. Whoever the dead woman was — had been — she deserved more than that. If Riley got it wrong, the thought of some thoughtless copper blundering upon an unconnected family with terrifying news was something she didn’t like to contemplate. As she looked beyond the glare of lights, trying to make the connection to where she might have seen her before, she noticed two other figures in the background beyond the canopy, standing against a gleam of polished metal half concealed in the bushes. As her eyes acclimatised to the change, she recognised the shape as a small car. The men were checking under the bonnet.

  ‘Why me?’ she queried, to buy herself some time. ‘What made you think I’d know her?’ The car the men were examining had been driven with considerable force into the ditch and beyond, burying its nose into the undergrowth and churning up a burrow of earth as it went. As Riley’s eyes became accustomed to the pattern of light and dark, she was beginning to realise that the crime scene was far more than just this woman’s body.

  ‘Are you saying you don’t know her?’ Pell was champing at the bit, plainly having to hold himself in check.

  ‘I don’t think so. It’s hard to tell. Is the car hers?’ She guessed they must already have an idea, unless the car was stolen, of course. Or rented. The question remained, though: out of all the inhabitants of the greater London metropolitan area, why had Pell called her?

  ‘Yes.’ He beckoned her back out of the ditch, holding out a hand to help her up. He let go as soon as she was on safe ground, as if prolonged contact might be misconstrued. When she was standing alongside him, he produced a plastic evidence bag and angled it so she could see the contents.

  ‘This was found in the foot-well,’ he explained. ‘You might not have known her, but she seems to have known you.’

  Riley studied the bag. Inside was a single square of yellow paper. A Post-it note, common in every household and office in the country. In spite of a smear of moisture on the outside of the plastic film, there was no mistaking what had been written on the paper in bold handwriting.

  It was Riley’s own name and telephone number.

  3

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Riley was slumped in the passenger seat of Pell’s car, holding a cup of coffee. It was lukewarm and sweet, like stewed caramel. But a welcome distraction from the scene outside. She was still wearing the white SOCO suit, and in spite of the lightweight fabric, she felt hot and constricted, as if swathed in cling-film.

  ‘It’s never easy,’ Pell replied. His tone was of a man who’d been here too many times, seen this often to be surprised anymore.

  The car smelled of dog and damp. Sweet wrappers and wet-wipes were crushed haphazardly into the door pockets, some tumbling out onto the floor around her feet. A pair of men’s ancient trainers lay in the foot-well, faded and curled like dried banana skins. The two available cup holders were jammed with polystyrene mugs, each filled with rubbish. A mobile skip, office and taxi all in one, she thought.

  ‘You don’t believe in cleaning, do you?’ she said.

  ‘I don’t have the time.’

  Outside, the night and the weather and the dark continued, interspersed with the comings and goings of the forensic and search teams combing the area around the body.

  Riley stared through the windscreen, wondering how long it would be before the press showed up. Not long, if their usual contacts were on the ball. Journalists had a nose for a story and Journalist. Her stomach went ice-cold as her thoughts suddenly fixed with glaring precision on the awful realisation that Pell had been unwittingly right; the dead woman had known her.

  She kept her eyes to the front in case Pell should interpret her expression. She needed time to think it through.

  The dead woman’s face had looked vaguely familiar, yet without that spark of absolute recognition. It was like seeing a celebrity in the street, but not being sure. It hadn’t helped that, down in that hollow and under the glare of the lights, any notable characteristics had been flattened, leaving a uniform blandness like a shop-front mannequin.

  Now she knew who she’d been looking at, she felt sick.

  Pell had taken a phone call moments after getting into the car. From what little he’d said, she knew he’d been hearing confirmation of the dead woman’s name and details. She got the impression it hadn’t come as a surprise.

  ‘Turns out she was a journalist,’ Pell muttered finally, half to himself. ‘Name of Helen Bellamy.’ Under the dull glow of the interior light, his face was less angular than she’d first thought, but still with a determined quality, as if hewn from a lump of wood but with the edges softened. He was also smooth-shaven, and his eyes were surprisingly dark, perhaps with Latin origins. With the hood of his slicker down, she saw his medium-crop hair was peppered with grey. Late thirties, she guessed. Stressed.

  ‘A journalist like you,’ he continued pointedly. He drummed strong fingers on the steering wheel, a tattoo of frustration. ‘You sure you don’t know her?’

  ‘I… might have met her. But that’s all.’ Riley had to force the words out, aware that deliberate lies now might come back to haunt her. She hoped Pell hadn’t noticed her hesitation.

  ‘She could have got your name for business purposes, I suppose.’ He didn’t sound convinced, as if randomness simply didn’t happen. His tone was reinforced by the expression in his eyes as he turned to watch her. ‘The thing is, why would she have it on her? Did you have a meeting arranged — maybe to work on something together?’ He let a few beats go by, then said flatly, ‘Did you know her or not?’

  ‘If I knew her
well enough that we were going to work together, I think I’d have remembered by now, don’t you?’ Riley was irritated by his probing, as if he was reluctant to extend his investigation much beyond the close confines of this car. Right now, all that her memory would give her of Helen Bellamy was a vague image of an elegant, willowy woman, friendly and self-assured. A freelance reporter like herself. No more, no less.

  ‘Do you know anyone else who might know her, then?’ He was clearly trying a different tack. ‘Circle of friends, work colleagues, boyfriends… girlfriends?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re in the same profession.’

  ‘Pell, I know lots of journalists, but none of them particularly well. Like you and other coppers — you’re not all best buddies, are you?’

  He pulled a face in wry acknowledgement. ‘Good point.’

  ‘Why,’ asked Riley impulsively, ‘do you think her hands were tied?’

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ he admitted, echoing the forensics man. ‘She’d been restrained and possibly hit, that’s all we can tell right now. The tape on her wrists might have been to subdue her while they were on the move. You didn’t get that from me, by the way.’

  ‘Of course.’ She focussed on the dashboard, trying to process the image of Helen being alive but restrained, unable to free herself or offer any resistance. The idea was macabre. Awful. ‘You don’t normally drag people out to crime scenes in the middle of the night — especially journalists. Why couldn’t this have waited until the morning?’ She waited, but he didn’t answer. ‘Particularly as you had an idea who she was before I got here.’

  Pell opened his mouth, then shut it again. The expression in his eyes was indecipherable. If he had any ulterior motives, he was keeping them to himself. ‘She was discovered just after midnight by a man walking his dogs. He said the car definitely wasn’t there earlier in the evening at ten o’clock, when he last came by, so it must have been dumped after that time. That’s confirmed by a residue of warmth on the engine block. We’re still trying to narrow down the timing.’