The Kill: (Maeve Kerrigan 5) Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Glossary of Police Terminology

  Epigraph

  Richmond Park

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  THEIR JOB IS TO INVESTIGATE CRIME – NOT BECOME THE VICTIMS …

  A killer is terrorising London but this time the police are the targets.

  Urgently re-assigned to investigate a series of brutal attacks on fellow officers, Maeve Kerrigan and her boss Josh Derwent have little idea what motivates the killer’s fury against the force.

  But they know it will only be a matter of time before the killer strikes again.

  About the Author

  ‘All my criminal elements have some basis in reality, no matter how awful they may be. Nothing is completely farfetched’ Jane Casey

  Crime is a family affair for Jane Casey. Married to a criminal barrister, she has a unique insight into the brutal underbelly of urban life, from the smell of a police cell to the darkest motives of a serial killer.

  This gritty realism has made her books international bestsellers and critical successes; while D.C. Maeve Kerrigan has quickly become one of the most popular characters in crime fiction.

  She has been shortlisted for the Irish Crime Novel of the Year Award three times as well as the Mary Higgins Clark Award. Jane has been recently longlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library Award.

  Follow Jane on Twitter @JaneCaseyAuthor

  For Mary Brennan

  with love and thanks

  Glossary of Police Terminology

  Cell site analysis: a method of establishing where a mobile phone was when it made or received a call, by reference to the mast (or ‘cell site’) that connected the phone to the network.

  CPS: Crown Prosecution Service; responsible for assessing the evidence gathered during police investigations and deciding what, if any, offence a suspect should be charged with. Also responsible for the prosecution of defendants in the criminal courts.

  CRB: Criminal Records Bureau; responsible for carrying out criminal records checks on those wishing to work in sensitive fields.

  DPS: Department of Professional Standards (officially the ‘Directorate of Professionalism’); unit of the Metropolitan Police responsible for investigating allegations of misconduct against officers and civilian staff.

  IPCC: Independent Police Complaints Commission; responsible for overseeing or conducting investigations into incidents where there may be police misconduct.

  MIT team: Murder Investigation Team; operational units of the Met’s Homicide and Major Crime Command; responsible for the investigation of murder, manslaughter and attempted murder as well as other serious and complex incidents. Each MIT has about thirty members and is led by a senior detective.

  PC: Police Constable; the lowest rank in the British police.

  PCSO: Police Community Support Officer; uniformed civilian staff employed to provide an additional uniformed presence and gather intelligence at a local level.

  PM: Post Mortem examination; medical examination of a body intended to establish, among other things, a cause of death.

  Public order offence: an offence contrary to one of the Public Order Acts involving offensive behaviour in public places, including serious public disorder.

  QC: Queen’s Counsel; a senior barrister with a high degree of experience and professional competence, instructed to prosecute and defend in the most serious criminal cases.

  Response Officer: uniformed police officer attached to a team that responds to 999 calls from the public.

  SNT: Safer Neighbourhoods Team; a local police unit covering one local government ward, typically consisting of one uniformed sergeant, several PCs and a number of PCSOs.

  SOCO: Scenes of Crime Officer; civilian police staff who gather forensic evidence. Officially known as Forensic Practitioners in the Metropolitan Police.

  Specials: Special Constables; volunteer police officers who have the same powers as full time officers but are unpaid.

  TSG: Territorial Support Group; uniformed unit mainly tasked with preventing and responding to incidents of public disorder. TSG units are routinely used to support local officers dealing with large-scale violence.

  Warrant card: photocard identifying the holder as a police officer.

  Here are the cops of London town

  Hardworking, brave and true.

  They drink their tea,

  Stay up til three,

  And take good care of you.

  Cops and Robbers, Janet & Allan Ahlberg

  Richmond Park

  Sunday 22 September 2013

  00.43

  The cold was like a living thing. It had sunk its teeth through the layers of clothing Megan wore, sliding through her skin to get to her bones. They ached. They hurt even more than the muscle cramping in her calf. She pulled her sleeves down over her hands and tucked her arms under her body. Slowly, she let her head sink down too, so her face was pillowed on the grass. She wanted to sleep so much. Her eyes kept closing. Maybe it would be easier to stay awake if she paid attention to the sounds of the night: Hugh’s breathing beside her, the wind in the trees, a rustle in the undergrowth, the music of the stars …

  ‘See that?’

  The voice was little more than a whisper but it stabbed through the lovely, soft darkness that had wrapped around Megan like a blanket.

  ‘Hm?’ She jerked her head up and looked keenly into the night at absolutely nothing.

  ‘Ten o’clock.’

  It took her a second to work out what Hugh meant, and by the time she’d looked where she was supposed to, there was nothing to see. Beside her, Hugh’s leg twitched in what she guessed was irritation.

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘Great big sow. Lovely lady.’

  ‘I missed it.’

  ‘Shh. She might be back.’

  Megan rubbed her eyes and peered at the featureless undergrowth again. All she needed was one flash of black and white, one sighting that she could take home like a trophy to prove that she’d been right to spend Saturday night sprawled in the mud in Richmond Park. She couldn’t shake the unworthy thought that she’d missed The X Factor for this. Bloody Ruby would have watched it, hours ago, curled up on the sofa in their flat. Ruby, who’d be asleep now. Ruby, who’d suggested she was only going out looking for badgers with Hugh because she fancied him. Megan had thought he was cute, but in an abstract, on-the-television-and-therefore-attractive way. She wouldn’t even kiss him, never mind anything more. Even the thought made Megan gag a little, but she turned it into a cough, just in case Hugh asked her what was wrong. She was no good at lying and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. That good deed earned her a glare from Hugh, and a twitch that made his beard move in
a very disconcerting way. Badgers were shy, he’d told her. They had to be quiet and still. With the two of them there, they’d be lucky to see anything at all.

  And now she’d missed the only thing to happen for hours. Who knew when Hugh would give up?

  The silence settled around them again. Megan made herself concentrate. She would make the best of this. She would see a beautiful badger in the wild, and have an experience to remember for ever, and she would never, ever do this again.

  The bang was shatteringly loud. It echoed around them and rolled out across the dark open spaces below, and as it faded Megan wasn’t altogether sure she hadn’t imagined it, until the second one came a moment later.

  ‘What the eff was that?’ Hugh abandoned any attempt to be stealthy, sitting up, bristling with outrage. He was still too conscious of his image to do anything as uncouth as proper swearing, Megan noted. Minor television personalities did not swear.

  ‘It sounded like a gun,’ she said timidly.

  ‘It can’t have been. Must have been a car backfiring.’

  ‘I don’t think it was a car.’

  ‘Must have been.’ Hugh was older than Megan by at least ten years, and he didn’t like it when she offered opinions, she’d noticed. He liked it when she listened to him and agreed with what he was saying. But she knew what she’d heard.

  ‘We should call the police.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘I’m not being ridiculous.’ But she let her phone slide back into her pocket anyway, recalling that there was no signal where they were. ‘Look, I don’t like it. Let’s go.’ She stood up, assuming that adventures in badger-watching were over for the night since Hugh was practically shouting.

  ‘Get down!’ He grabbed her leg, just above her knee.

  ‘If it was a car, it doesn’t matter if I stand up.’

  Cowardice fought a battle with superiority and won. ‘All right. You might be right. It might have been a gun. So stop drawing attention to yourself.’

  ‘They weren’t shooting at us.’

  ‘How do you know?’ She could see the whites of his eyes gleaming in the darkness. ‘They could be extremists. People who hate animal-lovers like us.’

  ‘Now that really is ridiculous.’ Megan began to walk away, taking long strides to get through the tangled grass. A flurry of movement behind her was Hugh, rushing to catch up.

  ‘Meg! Wait!’

  Megan absolutely, one hundred per cent loathed being called ‘Meg’. She went faster, concentrating on where she put her feet rather than the swearing and fussing behind her.

  ‘Megan! Get down! There’s a car!’

  The road skirted the bumpy hillside where Hugh had said there was a badgers’ sett, where they had waited for hours. She crouched and watched the car pass below them. It was just a shape, little more than a shadow, driving without lights. Its engine seemed noisy in the stillness of the night. Beside her, Hugh was trying to hide in the grass. The tiny spark of attraction flared and died forever.

  ‘It’s okay, Hugh. They’ve gone.’

  ‘Christ … I mean, crikey …’

  She gave him a minute to recover himself. ‘Let’s get back to the car park.’

  ‘I’m going to call the police.’

  ‘Okay. Good idea.’ It was a good idea five minutes ago when I suggested it, too. Megan hoped he was on a different network, but in the blue light of the phone’s screen, Hugh’s face was grim.

  ‘Damn. No signal.’

  He hurried past her, not waiting to see if she was following. She stuck her hands in her pockets and trudged after him, trying to remember the car and whether she’d seen anything of the driver, or if there’d been a passenger. The police would want to know. If it was connected with the shooting.

  If there had even been a shooting.

  They were following a different route back, she realised after a while, across the flank of the hill.

  ‘Why are we going this way?’

  ‘This is the quickest way,’ Hugh threw over his shoulder, not stopping. ‘And I don’t want to walk along the road in case they come back.’

  Megan considered the long, winding walk they had taken at the start of their expedition, over uneven ground that required a lot of arm-holding and hands-on guiding to navigate. She’d wondered about it, but she hadn’t minded. She minded now, now that she was cold and her feet were wet from the dew and fear prickled across her skin like an electrical charge. She didn’t think they had been targeted, or even noticed, but she didn’t like being out there in the dark when something strange was going on.

  Woodland crowned the top of the hill. Megan was glad that Hugh didn’t lead them through it – the trees grew close together and the darkness under the canopy seemed impenetrable. Going around the edge wasn’t much less hazardous. Hugh tripped over a log half-hidden in the grass.

  ‘Sh—sugar.’

  He was concentrating on watching where he was going when Megan exclaimed, ‘Look.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Another car.’

  Hugh was crouching before she’d finished saying the second word. ‘It’s a trap. It must be. An ambush. They pretended they were leaving so we’d show ourselves.’ He pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked it again, with the same result. Twisting around to look at her, he snapped, ‘For God’s sake, Meg, get low and stay low.’

  ‘This one is parked,’ Megan pointed out.

  It was parked in an odd place, though. There was a small service road that branched off the main one. It wasn’t open to the public – Megan had noticed the signs earlier, on her way past. The car was parked under the trees, pointing into the darkness, and from the road it would have been more or less invisible. From where Megan was standing she could see the back windows and the boot, but that was only because her eyes were used to the lack of light. She couldn’t have said why but she was drawn towards it.

  ‘Where are you going? Come back!’

  Megan was getting used to ignoring Hugh’s hissed orders. She kept going, bending to peer inside the car, but the darkness was total. She was within twenty yards of it when she stopped.

  ‘What is it?’ Hugh had followed, staying well back.

  ‘The windscreen is shattered.’

  ‘Maybe they crashed.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She took a few more steps, getting closer. ‘I think—’

  It was like one of those pictures that plays with perception, where a flock of birds turns into a crowd of people. One minute there was a car, familiar and unthreatening despite the broken glass. Then she looked again. Once she’d seen the blood, she couldn’t see anything else.

  ‘What? Meg, what’s wrong?’

  The Megan who had agreed, giggling, to go badger-watching with Hugh would have whirled around to bury her face in his chest. That Megan would have let him take charge. That Megan would have sobbed out her horror and upset and would have been glad to be comforted.

  That Megan was gone, maybe for ever. The new Megan turned to Hugh. Her voice was calm, when she spoke. Cold, even. The distress was there, somewhere, but hidden by a strange kind of composure.

  ‘We do need to call the police. We should hurry.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think what we heard were shots.’ She paused for a second. ‘I think we heard a murder.’

  Chapter 1

  Afterwards, everyone agreed on one thing: she was a beautiful bride. Christine Bell was always pretty, but on her wedding day she glowed with happiness. A cynic might have said the glow was something to do with the small bump under the forgiving folds of her empire-line wedding dress. I might have said it, but I was having a day off from cynicism. Even though I was allergic to public displays of affection, I let Rob hold my hand as Christine walked past us up the aisle. She beamed as she clung to her father’s arm, taking her time about getting to the altar although the organist was thundering through ‘Here Comes the Bride’ as if it was a race to the finish.
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br />   Leaning out, I could see Ben Dornton as he turned around to watch her walking towards him and the mixture of love, awe and hope on his face jolted me out of my usual composure. Ben was a detective sergeant on my team. Balding and thin, he was not my idea of a romantic hero, even in a pearl-grey morning suit, but there was something unguarded and honest in his expression that brought tears to my eyes. I squeezed Rob’s hand as I swallowed the lump in my throat and blinked furiously, afraid to rub my eyes in case I smudged my mascara. He didn’t look at me but I could see the corners of his mouth twitching and knew why: a five-pound bet outside the church that I would cry before Christine made it to the altar.

  Which reminded me about the other party to that particular bet. I leaned forward to see across the aisle, to the box pew where DI Josh Derwent was standing on his own, order of service in hand, glowering at me. He shook his head slowly, disgusted. He’d thought I could hang on until the vows before I wept. Not for the first time, I’d let him down.

  And since I’d bet both of them I wouldn’t cry at all, I’d let myself down too.

  I didn’t care. I shrugged at Derwent and went digging in my bag for a tissue. There were plenty of other people in the congregation who were sobbing happily too: most of Christine’s family, including her father, and lots of my colleagues’ girlfriends who were obviously imagining the day it would be their turn. The two bridesmaids, still pink from their walk to the altar, were dabbing at their eyes. And why not cry? It was a beautiful day, and Christine was a beautiful bride, and the two of them couldn’t have been happier to be getting married. There was a baby on the way, it was true, but this wasn’t a shotgun wedding. They had got engaged months before the bride got pregnant. Christine was a civilian analyst in our office, and liked to confide in me for no reason that I could see, so I had been party to the long, tearful discussions in the ladies’ loo about whether it was better to postpone the wedding until after the baby had arrived or whether she should just get on with it. My vote had been firmly for getting on with it. There was a limit to how many times I could feign interest in swatches of material for bridesmaids’ dresses or wedding favours or accent colours for decorating the chairs at the reception.