McIntosh Bye Bye Baby

A gripping crime thriller featuring DCI Jack Hawksworth and a chilling serial killer (DCI Jack Hawksworth 1)
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-83501-129-4
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 416 Seiten

Reihe: DCI Jack Hawksworth

Autoren/Hrsg.

McIntosh, Fiona

Leseproben

1

5 NOVEMBER 2002

Jean Farmer took the call, and regretted instantly that she’d been the one to pick up the phone. She knew the Sheriffs and hated that she would now have to ruin Mike’s night out at the Castle Hotel with the news from Lincoln Hospital.

‘How serious is it, Sister?’ she asked.

‘Not as bad as it first appeared, I’m glad to say,’ the nurse from Casualty explained. ‘We’re sending her home, but she was crying for her dad and I promised Mrs Sheriff we’d call him.’

‘What exactly should I tell him?’

‘Simply that his daughter has been involved in a sporting accident. The wound to her arm is quite deep, but the bleeding has stopped, and it has been stitched and she’ll be fine. Just ask him to get home immediately, please. Mrs Sheriff is on her way there with their daughter now, and both of them are quite upset.’

‘Okay, will do. Thank you, Sister.’

Jean put the phone down, grabbed one of the staff just going off duty to hold the fort at the front desk for a couple of minutes, and headed to the dining room. Mike, in high spirits, and a group of work companions sat at the long table near the window.

She touched his shoulder.

‘I’m so sorry to interrupt your dinner, Mike, but we’ve just taken a call from the hospital. It’s Susan.’

‘Su—’ Mike Sheriff put his pint glass down clumsily. ‘What’s happened?’

Jean saw some of the colour drain from his face as alarm overrode the alcohol’s effects. ‘I don’t want you to worry but there’s been an accident,’ she started. Mike had pushed his chair back and was on his feet before she could say much more. ‘Mike, hold on.’ Jean grabbed his arm. ‘It’s all right. Susan’s fine, I promise. She’s hurt her arm apparently, but she’s okay. I’ve just got off from speaking with the sister on duty in Casualty.’

Mike appeared to be sobering fast. ‘I’d better go.’

Jean nodded. ‘I said we’d get you on your way immediately – but head home rather than the hospital. Diane’s on her way back to Louth now.’

‘I’m sorry, everyone,’ Mike said to the teachers around the table as he gathered his things together. ‘My mobile! Some bastard stole it today.’

‘It was probably that toe-rag, Wilkins,’ one of the others piped up. It was John Buchanan, a bitter sort. ‘He’s the school fence, I’m sure of it.’

Jean gave Buchanan a pained expression because she knew the Wilkins family too. And they were fine – their children were allowed to run a bit wild but they had good hearts and Georgie Wilkins was unlikely a thief. She returned her attention to Sheriff. ‘Mike, you’re most welcome to use a phone here; call on Diane’s mobile as they’re travelling now,’ she said, ushering the bewildered man away from the table and towards the double doors that led past the bar.

‘She doesn’t have a mobile either,’ he said, frowning. ‘Never needs one.’ Jean stayed quiet. ‘Sorry again. I’ll settle up tomorrow,’ he slurred slightly over his shoulder to his colleagues.

Jean answered for them. ‘That’s fine. Now listen, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to drive,’ she said. ‘Let me call you a taxi.’ She squeezed Mike’s arm reassuringly, then called across to the barman. ‘Dave, just keep an eye on Mike for me, will you? He’s a bit unsteady, just had some bad news. I’m ordering a taxi – he’s got to get home urgently.’

The man nodded. ‘Righto. I’m just checking through this after-noon’s delivery, but that’s fine.’

‘Thanks. I’ll be right back. Two minutes, Mike, okay.’

And that’s when I grabbed my chance. I’d been playing it by ear, so couldn’t squander this opportunity with the woman now out of sight, the barman preoccupied and, best of all, Mikey intoxicated enough to be compliant. Both of the staff had seen me, but what’s one more tourist in the bar of a popular hotel, and I’d gone to some lengths to disguise myself by wearing a false beard, a hat and a loose coat. Besides, I was enjoying the musty, gentle fizziness of a pale ale after so many years of living abroad. I sipped at it slowly, letting the familiar flavour sluice away the fear; killing time before the real killing began.

It was hard to believe the moment of redemption had arrived. I’d watched Mikey for weeks, watched the whole Sheriff family going about their business. The first time I’d laid eyes on him I felt as though all the breath had been sucked from my lungs. For the past thirty years he and the others had loomed in my thoughts as monsters, and yet here Mikey was now, middle-aged and so harmless-looking.

I shook myself free of the unexpected sentimentality. I would go through with it – there was no doubt about that. The deep wound that he and the others had inflicted upon me all those years ago had only pretended to heal. Beneath the scab of the new life I’d built, the injury had festered.

Now, with the fresh pain of loss tearing me apart, that old fury had spewed forth in an angry torrent. To lose our perfect child, lying so sweetly in his cot as if gently sleeping, his tiny six-month-old body still achingly warm, had sapped every last reserve of my strength. It was the end of my marriage too, the end of a happy life with Kim which had sustained me over the past couple of decades. I rued the day I’d suggested that starting a family would complete us. Now we had lost two daughters to miscarriage and our precious boy to some inexplicable string of letters. ‘SIDS,’ the doctor had said gently, although it had explained nothing.

I had done everything to make my life work; to walk in the light rather than dwell in the dark. No one could accuse me of bemoaning my past and yet it seemed the horror of my teenage years was never to leave me. And there he was, one of the perpetrators, about to pay for the events of his own past. I took a final sip of my beer and felt a rush of adrenaline spike through me as I began my performance.

‘Thanks. See you later,’ I said to the barman, who was busy counting crates and ticking off sheets of paper. He didn’t even look around.

I concealed myself in the corridor that led to the toilets and watched through the glass of the door as the receptionist led Mikey out of the restaurant and into the bar. He looked shaken, a bit unsteady on his feet, no doubt helped along by the beer and wine he’d enjoyed during the evening. The woman said something to him, her hand squeezing his arm, then called out to someone – presumably the barman – and left Mikey alone. He swayed slightly in a daze.

I seized my moment and pulled off the coat, hat, beard and stuffed them into the backpack I was carrying, before I re-entered the bar quietly. I pasted an expression of slight bafflement on my face, then grinned. ‘Mikey Sheriff?’ I called softly, contrived disbelief charging my words.

Sheriff stared at me in confusion. I could understand why. Unlike me, he hadn’t changed much at all. Greyer, paunchier, those dark-blue eyes even more hooded than I recalled, but there was no mistaking plain, duck-lipped Mikey Sheriff of three decades previous. That he had won the heart of any woman was a surprise.

My luck was in: the barman was nowhere to be seen, Mikey no doubt already forgotten in his need to get on with his work. I slapped the man I was going to kill on the arm. ‘You don’t recognise me, Mike? Come on, you used to call me Bletch!’

I watched his confused gaze as the nickname from so many years ago registered. ‘Bletch?’ he repeated dumbly.

I nodded, still holding my smile.

‘It can’t be,’ he went on. ‘Not A—’

I couldn’t risk him naming me publicly. ‘Is something wrong?’ I interrupted. I knew I had only seconds now before the woman from the front desk returned.

Sheriff didn’t even notice the clumsy shift in topic. Instead, he groaned. ‘My daughter’s been involved in an accident. I have to get home. They’re calling a taxi.’

‘I wouldn’t bother,’ I said. ‘I’ve heard there’s a delay of about forty-five minutes.’

‘In Lincoln?’ he said, aghast. ‘I can’t imagine it.’

I nodded. ‘There’s some convention going on. You can try, but I was about to head off anyway. I’m happy to take you home. It’s probably far quicker.’

I took his arm and guided him to the side door, keen to get him out the building before the receptionist returned. Help came from an unexpected quarter. A youngish woman – the housekeeper, I assumed, from her clipboard and name badge – entered through the same door we were making for.

‘Hello, Mr Sheriff,’ she said, then sensed the atmosphere and looked to me. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Help me outside with him, please,’ I said. ‘He needs some air. He’s just received some bad news.’

To my relief she didn’t ask any more questions, just took Sheriff’s other arm and helped me bundle him into the cold November night. The chill air slapped us in the face. Worried it would sober Mikey up, I quickly explained to the girl what had happened. ‘So I’ll run him back to Louth,’ I finished. ‘Thanks for your help.’ Behind Mike’s back I made a gesture to indicate that he’d had too much to drink.

She caught on fast and turned to him eagerly. ‘Mr Sheriff, listen. Give me your car keys and I’ll move your car – the red Vauxhall, right? – into the staff car park. It’ll be safe there. You don’t want to be picked up by the police, do...