Burning Truth: An Edge-0f-The-Seat British Crime Thriller (DCI BOYD CRIME THRILLERS Book3) (DCI BOYD CRIME SERIES) Read online

  Burning Truth

  A DCI BOYD THRILLER

  Alex Scarrow

  A BURNING TRUTH

  Copyright © 2021 by Alex Scarrow

  All rights reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by GrrBooks

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  DCI BOYD RETURNS IN

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Alex Scarrow

  About the Author

  To my mother, Audrey – an oasis of calm, compassion and wisdom

  Prologue

  ‘Shit! Jesus! What the hell? T.P. – what the fuck did you do to her?’

  T.P. shook his head as he crouched to examine the body. She was clearly dead. She’d been dead for some time, in fact. Her skin had started to turn blotchy as the immobile blood in her body began to settle and become livor mortis stains. Vomit filled her mouth and had spilled down the side of one cheek onto the chaise longue.

  ‘The drugs did it.’ T.P. turned round to look at the others – all of them looking worse for wear after the blow-out into the early hours.

  ‘We all played a part in this,’ he said.

  ‘This… is… going to…’ started one of them. ‘Oh, God, we’re so fucked!’

  ‘Shut up!’ T.P. stood up. ‘This can be fixed. This CAN be fixed.’ He stared at the others. ‘This WILL be fixed… or it’s over for everybody.’

  The guest room was silent, but from down the hallway the faint sound of ‘Jump in the Fire’ by Metallica could be heard, still playing on the sound system.

  ‘We’re all Spartans here,’ he said. ‘Right? Fucking Spartans!’

  T.P. took in the blanched faces in the room.

  ‘Right?!’

  The others nodded mutely.

  ‘Remember the pact,’ he said. ‘This is between us. No one talks.’

  1

  Firefighter Alison Tucker was hopeful that the house was now empty. The fire had taken a firm hold of the old stone-walled building. They were going to have to pull back and fight it from the outside.

  If anyone was left inside, especially upstairs, there was nothing more that could be done – smoke inhalation would have finished them off by this point. She could hear frantic comms chatter coming in from the lads outside about the stability of the roof. Eagle House was a grand old Regency-era building with stone walls, but there was a hell of a lot of sturdy oak at the top holding up a heavy lead slate roof.

  ‘Ali, it’s looking dodgy. Clear your team out right NOW.’

  ‘All right,’ she replied. Then louder, so that her voice dominated the comms channel. ‘Everyone out,’ she called to her two colleagues in the building. ‘NOW!’

  A moment later, the bulky outlines of Ed and Graham emerged from the swirling smoke, both moving as quickly as they could, burdened like packhorses in their bulky flame retardant jackets, with oxygen bottles on their backs.

  ‘Anyone?’ she asked as they squeezed past her to get to the exit point – the conservatory.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Ed, shouting over the roar and crackle of the flames.

  They disappeared through the smoke, barging past still-undamaged furniture that looked exquisite and expensive, and all destined to become charcoal and ashes very shortly.

  Eagle House was one she knew well. For Alison, a denizen of Hastings all her life – a Hastonian – it had been a lifelong landmark for her: one of life’s perennial things, always there, but hidden away by trees and bushes and a moss-encrusted stone wall that ran alongside London Road. Now the historical building was ablaze. Another piece of Hastings’ grand past would be a smouldering blackened shell by the morning.

  Over the comms, one of the team outside hosing the roof shouted a warning that part of it looked about ready to cave in.

  Enough lingering. She turned to follow Ed and Graham when she heard a faint gurgling scream above the roar of flames and the whistle of air being drawn through the building.

  She paused.

  She had two daughters, Mia and Penny, and a lovely guy called Brian waiting for her at home.

  But the scream cut through the noise of the fire – a pitiful yet very human moan.

  Shit.

  ‘I think I heard someone else inside!’ she yelled into the radio.

  ‘Too late, Ali. Roof’s beginning to sag. Get the fuck out now!’ It was Grant, leading firefighter – and the grumpy old sweat who’d begrudgingly, finally, permitted a woman to join his team.

  ‘Get out now!’ he barked.

  The scream came once more. It sounded feminine, almost childlike.

  Fuck it.

  ‘There’s definitely someone!’ she relayed to Grant. ’I’m going to take a quick look!’

  Without waiting for his response, she made her way through the thickening smoke, stumbling as her thigh banged painfully into the corner of a side table.

  ‘Ali! That’s enough!’ barked Grant. ‘Out now!’

  The next cry was close. Very close. The problem was that the smoke was now so fucking thick she could be wit
hin a yard of the person and walk straight past them.

  ‘Ali, the roof is going!’ shouted Grant. ‘GET OUT!’

  Through the whorls and mini tornados of swirling black smoke, Ali glimpsed something. An outline, a silhouette.

  She took a step closer and bumped straight into it.

  It was a snooker table. One of those expensive full-sized ones. The surface baize was mostly burned away; it was the corner pockets that actually gave it away. Lying on the table was a man. The poor, screaming, blackened wretch was flailing around like a bluebottle stuck to flypaper.

  In the last few seconds – because that’s what she was down to now – she could make out the struggling form. He was tied down, wrists and ankles, like a starfish. A face, blackened and burst, split cheeks running with liquidised human fat, itself fuel for the fire. And… among that blackened flesh, the startling whiteness of two rounded eyes and a gaping mouth full of gold fillings.

  A horror mask that would have haunted her sleep for the rest of her life.

  But she was spared that.

  The roof collapsed.

  She never had a chance.

  2

  DAY 1

  Boyd’s own little piece of grisly hell occupied his current dream. Not the car wreck, thank God, but the Heinz mayonnaise jar, filled with formaldehyde, that was sitting at the back of his safe in the study.

  A parting gift from the Russians, it contained what he strongly suspected was Gerald Nix’s severed ear. As in reality, beside the jar was a wad of cash bound with an elastic band and smudged with dried blood – also, presumably Nix’s. About ten thousand pounds in twenties, but Boyd hadn’t counted it. Hadn’t touched it, in fact. There’d been a clear message there: Carrot and Stick. Threat and Reward.

  Be good and we’ll be nice… And remember: we know where you live.

  Boyd could have – indeed, definitely should have – taken them straight in to be forensically examined. But there was that other thing: his chief superintendent. He had no way of knowing for sure whether Her Madge was in some way directly linked to the Russians or (taking a more charitable view) following orders handed down from someone who was taking their dirty money.

  In his view, what he had sitting in the safe was evidence that he’d been both threatened and bribed. Evidence that he might one day need – and he didn’t trust that even if he handed it in, it wouldn’t simply disappear. He’d told the only other copper he could completely trust: DC Okeke – and she had shared his concerns.

  So there they were, ticking like a time bomb in his safe that could either blow up in his face or exonerate him if an anti-corruption investigation: two pieces of toxic waste that were percolating into his dreams along with the play-repeat, play-repeat image from his second Hastings murder case, of Kristy Clarke’s snarling face as he’d jumped to his death.

  The gasp of Clark’s breath being expelled as the rope pulled taut had morphed over the recent weeks to form its own distinct word – haaa-rck. The ‘ck’ at the end was his neck snapping.

  Tonight, though, in Boyd’s dream, Kristy Clarke was still alive, swinging, grinning and saying that word over and over…

  ‘Dad! Dad!! Wake up!’

  Boyd opened his eyes to see his room soaked with the bluish-grey light of pre-dawn. He’d yet to put curtains up in here and having tall windows on two walls made it something of a goldfish bowl. Lovely for those sunny mornings of which there had been less than a dozen in the six months they’d been living down here.

  ‘What’s the…? What’s going on, Ems?’

  ‘Dad, it’s Ozzie. He’s not well.’

  He palmed the sleep out of his eyes as he sat up. Ozzie normally slept beside him on the double bed, entitled bloody sod, his head on the pillow like a human.

  ‘Where is he? What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘It looks pretty bad. He’s sick.’

  Boyd swung his legs out from under the quilt and onto the cold wooden floor. ‘You sure?’

  ‘He needs a vet, Dad.’

  He looked at his bedside clock. It was quarter to five in the morning. ‘Okay, we can take him in after breakf–’

  ‘No. Dad… now,’ Emma said firmly. ‘He keeps throwing up and he’s not moving.’

  She led him to her bedroom. Ozzie was lying on his side on her bed, panting rapidly with his head beside a pool of dark and drying vomit.

  ‘Bollocks’ was the only useful thing Boyd could think to say.

  Five minutes later, they had him spread out on a towel in the back seat of the car and were driving uphill to the vets in Ore.

  ‘Has he been poisoned do you think?’ asked Boyd as he eased to a stop at a red light.

  ‘It’s right at the next lights,’ said Emma, checking her phone. ‘I don’t know. I’ve been googling it. It could either be a toxin, a reaction or a blockage.’

  ‘Reaction?’

  ‘Allergy.’ She looked at him. ‘Dogs have them, Dad. Just like humans do.’

  ‘To what?’ He couldn’t think of anything out of the ordinary that Ozzie had had in the last twelve hours. Dried Kibble – the usual brand. A corner or two of toast with Marmite and butter on. A broken-off bit of a chocolate digestive, nothing exactly exotic or lethal.

  ‘Have you given him anything different?’ she asked.

  ‘I was just running through that. I don’t think so.’

  The light turned green and he gunned the car forward across the all-but-deserted crossroads. Ozzie whimpered in the back seat.

  ‘He shouldn’t have most of the things you give him anyway. It’s not good for him,’ scolded Emma.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ he said with a heavy sigh. ‘When I was a kid, Grandma gave her dog all sorts of crap. She didn’t often buy them dog food. They lived mostly on our scraps.’

  ‘Jesus,’ muttered Emma. ‘And they lived to how old?’

  Boyd shrugged. ‘Old-ish. Nine. Ten, I think?’

  ‘And they were fat, I’m guessing.’

  He shrugged again. They were, to be fair, both chunky, lolloping chocolate Labs. He turned right at the next light.

  ‘That was then,’ she said. She made ‘then’ sound like it was pre-war Britain. ‘This is now. The additives we get in our food are pretty horrific. Especially for dogs.’

  It was too early in the morning to get a lecture from her on the recent flood of US imports. Anyway, Ozzie might have picked up something in the garden, or on the beach last night. The rubbish that out-of-towners left behind on the shingle at the end of a bank holiday weekend was pretty depressing to witness.

  ‘It’s up ahead, there,’ said Emma. ‘See?’

  Boyd saw the sign: Bodine Group Veterinary Surgery. The car park was empty except for one car, but there was a light on in the building. ‘You’re sure they’re open this early?’

  ‘I called. They’re expecting us.’

  He parked his Captur and, between them, Boyd and Emma, carried Ozzie, limp and lifeless, to the front door of the vets. The door automatically swung inwards and they carried him into the waiting room.

  ‘This is Ozzie?’ said a woman in green scrubs. To Boyd, she looked only a couple of years older than his daughter.

  Emma nodded. ‘You the one I spoke to?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ The vet pushed over a low trolley on castor wheels. ‘On here,’ she said.

  Boyd gently rested Ozzie on the blue plastic mattress. ‘He’s been vomiting repeatedly,’ he said. The vet squatted down and lifted Ozzie’s jowls. She tutted.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Emma, stroking his side.

  ‘His gums are a bit pale. Has he had any blood in his stool?’

  Emma looked at Boyd. ‘You walked him last night. Can you remember?’

  Boyd shook his head. ‘I… I don’t really tend to study them that closely, Em. Thinking about it – I’m not sure he actually went.’

  The vet exchanged a quick glance with Emma and then turned to Boyd. ‘I’m going to admit him. He could have eaten something that’s got stuck
. Do you have pet insurance?’

  ‘Uh, no. Not really. Should I?’

  She raised her eyebrows. A face that Boyd interpreted as meaning ‘This isn’t going to be cheap’. ‘Let’s worry about that later,’ she said.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Okay.’ She stood up straight. ‘I’m going to take him through now. I’ve got your phone number?’ she said to Emma.

  She nodded.

  ‘It’s Emma? Isn’t it?’

  ‘Emma Boyd, yes.’

  ‘Right. When our receptionist comes in, I’ll get her to call you back and we can set up Ozzie’s treatment record.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Emma. ‘Thank you so much for coming in so early.’ Then, one hand stroking his ear: ‘Ozzie Bear, please be okay.’

  Boyd watched Ozzie being wheeled through the double doors and out of sight, wondering whether the queasy flopping sensation in his own gut was his concern over the size of the bill or concern for the survival chances of his dog.