The Swap Skills Killer Read online

  “Bloody Hell Oliver, it surely can’t be Penny, I have to find out if it is,” and he pulled away from Oliver and raced towards the SOC tent, nearly falling arse over tit on the sludgy grass. Amelia scrambled after him worried about what was looming.

  He brushed the sweat away that was collecting on his brow. A vein popped out of his neck as fear crossed his face as he crouched down to the body, too scared to open his eyes in fear of what he might encounter.

  A sudden coldness and dread pummelled his heart as he leaned nearer. The aroma of death, similar to rotten eggs, intermingling with wet leaves and damp earth made the acid in his belly rise, a bile taste in his mouth.

  He stopped dead as if rooted to the spot. “Y-yes, it’s Penny” stuttering his words with disbelief, reaching up a hand to cover his mouth hoping it would stop the vomit coming up. Amelia wrapped her arm around his waist to steady him.

  “Are you alright Jake? Do you want me to get you a cup of sweet tea; I have some that I mashed before we came out in my bag in the car?”

  “Please Amelia I would love some tea; this has all come as a bit of a shock. This is the last thing I expected when I got the message from Oliver.”

  He spoke to the forensics and asked if they had any idea yet how she had died. They said that she had a blow to the head. It looked like she had been beaten and tortured, stabbed in the heart, obviously raped with the bruises in the groin area and on her thighs. She had died over thirty-six hours ago, killed elsewhere and dumped at the site.

  Sadness clouded his features and Oliver said, “We have to take her away as soon as possible as the rain will have washed some of the DNA away. We will have more information when we get her to the forensics and the morgue.

  Jake wobbled to one side as if he was going to fall and Oliver steadied him. His chest rose and fell with rapid breaths, making him feel light-headed.

  “What a catastrophe. What am I going to tell my brother?” he lamented to Oliver with a heavy feeling in his stomach. “Who would have wanted to kill Penny, and why?”

  “That’s what we have to find out Jake, that’s our job,” Oliver said.

  Oliver Blackwell was a hard-nosed Detective, and had seen a few murders in his time, but it hits deep when it affects the police force.

  Amelia hugged Jake and whispered, “Come on Jake, let’s go and see your brother together.”

  Oliver said “Yes. Come on Jake; there’s nothing else we can do for her. I will question the witness at the station. Lawrence and the other press guys are going to be out like flies soon and we have to get our story together for Lawrence because you know he doesn’t miss a trick.”

  CHAPTER 6

  When Jake and Amelia got to the car, they had another cup of sweet tea and Amelia had put a drop of whisky in it, Jake felt relaxed enough to contact family. He firstly rang his mum and dad and gave them the devastating news, and asked them to come over to the house and he would give them the full details as far as he knew of what had happened to Penny. He then rang Jeremy and told him that he was coming over to see him immediately.

  “Sorry, you can’t” Jeremy replied snappily. “I won’t be home till 7pm; I’ve been on a week’s Sales Course in Derbyshire and won’t be back in Horncastle till then. Anyway, to what do I owe the pleasure of this conversation? It must be going on five years since we have set eyes on each other, and not a text, e-mail or phone call. What makes you think you can ring me and I come running like a puppy dog any time you damn well please?”

  Jake grimaced “So you’ve been away from home for a week and Penny has been at home alone. Am I correct in assuming that?”

  “Yes, what’s the problem with that? She’s a grown woman and it’s not as if she’s frightened to be on her own, in fact, she likes some quiet time to go on the internet and Facebook her friends, you know what women are like. Look, I do not want any brotherly lectures from you mate; you can keep them to yourself. You haven’t been much of a brother anyway these past few years and you cannot say that I haven’t tried. We have invited you to family barbecues and mum and dad have invited us to family meals and outings and you don’t come if I am going.”

  Jake cursed. “Just bloody shut the fuck up Jeremy, and get back here now, it’s important you do that for me straight away...”

  “Don’t you talk to me like that or I will deck you when I get there, should have done it a long time ago, treating me like shit on the bottom of your shoe, wipe it off and forget about it.”

  The words wounded Jake. “Look Jeremy, let’s stop all this squabbling. You will regret what you’ve just said when you get here,” said Jake feeling hurt.

  “Why, what’s the catastrophe. What’s wrong, is Penny OK?” Jeremy stammered.

  Jake’s tone softened. “Look, Jeremy, I can’t talk about it over the phone, it wouldn’t be right, but get back here as soon as possible, in fact, come straight to my place, I’ll be waiting, we can talk then.”

  “OK, whatever, but I don’t need any lectures; I’ve got to keep my head clear as I have notes to write up. It’s very important to Penny and me for me to get this promotion job, and if I don’t get these notes written down properly I can forget the job.”

  “Okay Jeremy, I understand, just hurry back, but take care with the traffic.”

  Sadness clouded his features as he turned to Amelia and announced that Jeremy had been away for the last week on a sales course so Penny had been on her own at home.

  Amelia said, “When he gets back to your house and he has your parents here to support him and we’ve spoken to him we will have to get over to his house and see if we can get any clues as to what happened.”

  Jake nodded his agreement, glanced at his watch, “We have just over an hour before he gets back. Let’s get back to mine as I need to be there for mum and dad as I’ve told them about Penny, and I’ve asked them to meet me there.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Jake had a dilemma now, he had not spoken to Jeremy for five years and there was no love lost between them. He had not had any contact with him since their wedding, and that ended in a spectacular showdown when all the guests had gone.

  It came about when Jake asked how Jeremy could afford such a lavish wedding on his salary. Jeremy let slip that he had borrowed the money off his parents six months earlier for the grand wedding, and Jake found out that he had not paid them anything back.

  He knew the only reason they were invited to the wedding was a matter of courtesy and for his parent’s sake. If it was down to him he would not have bothered, but Emily said it would be petty not to go. His parent’s would also have made an issue of it, and the last thing he wanted was to upset his mother.

  Jakes reply to his mother’s annoyance about his stubbornness to socialise at Jeremy’s wedding was ‘Why be a hypocrite.’ In Jake’s view, a spade is a spade.

  Jake could never forgive his brother for borrowing for a top-notch wedding, even though his parents said it did not matter that he had not paid them, it was okay, and they did not want the money back. It was the fact that the monthly pay back plan had not been adhered to that riled Jake.

  Moreover, the grudge went deeper. Jeremy formed an image that he had grown up in the shadow of his older brother who was a high-achiever in school, good at anything he set his mind to. He was an excellent sportsman, drop dead handsome, and a sensitive person who was extremely popular with all the girls throughout school.

  The fact that Jake had followed his father’s example and joined the police force at twenty-eight made Jeremy self-conscious that he was only a sales representative. Jake was the strong silent type that tends to sit back and observe rather than join in and the girls loved that about him.

  Jeremy also fancied Emily, but she chose Jake, even though Jeremy was more outgoing. It grated on Emily sometimes that Jake was a private person and rarely talked about his feelings. It could be the start of an argument when he used to sit there chewing on the fat instead of coming straight out with it. He could sometimes be insensitive
to the hardships of others and he could never understand how his brother ended up in debt to his parents.

  He could get riled easy and did regret his reckless character, he knew he would fly in and act on impulse, not letting the one on the other end of his temper get the chance to explain themselves. His mother always used to reprimand him for lacking common sense and his carelessness of consequences, making him feel a little bit guilty now.

  He would not let Jeremy and Penny go to Emily’s funeral, he told them that they could go and see her at the Chapel of Rest a few days before the funeral, but he would not have them at the funeral. The truth was he did not want Jeremy to see him break down and cry.

  It altered things now his sister-in-law was dead, and he still had trouble taking it all in. To solve the crime he had to have contact with his brother although he could get his boss to take him off the case, as it was a family member, but he knew that would just be an excuse. Oliver knew of the family rift and he hardly knew Penny, and that was wrong. Although he could say that, he was not close, and did not really know her at all because of the family feud. What should he do, or more so, what would be the right thing to do?

  He decided to ask his police sidekick Detective Sergeant Amelia Saunders, who he had not known for very long, but she would always give him her honest opinion, sometimes being a little too forthcoming and abrupt.

  She was a sharp eyed, short-tongued type of a girl, and must be something to do with her red hair. If he had not been so off relationships and socialising since his wife died, there might have been some kind of romance with Amelia somewhere along the line. There was rumours circulating round the office that she was gay, but he tended not to listen to gossip and would form his own opinion when he knew her a bit better.

  “What do you think I ought to do about this situation with Jeremy? I could ask Blackwell to take me off the case, but that would only be an excuse. I barely knew Penny with not having any contact for the past five years.”

  Amelia shrugged and said “Jake the rift between you and Jeremy will not get better due to your stubborn arse ways to come to some sort of compromise with him.”

  Jake admitted with a nod. “I know I am stubborn, but I don’t know why he went to so much trouble to organise such an expensive wedding when he did not have the money. It’s like going to the car showroom and looking at Sport’s Cars when you only have money for a Mini. I just don’t get it, and cannot understand why he took the hump when I just wanted to put my point across and speak my mind. Since talking with him over the phone, I do feel a sense of guilt, particularly as he kept saying that it is me that hasn’t tried.”

  “Stubborn is not the word, more like stupid,” Amelia enlightened him.

  “Don’t hold back will you girl, say it as it is, won’t you!” Jake said.

  “I’m not known to be diplomatic and I hate to shatter your illusions if you think your new partner is a walk over when things get tough,” Amelia said.

  “Well you truly have guts talking to your DCI like that,” Jake said.

  Jeremy was willing to be civil and get together as a family but Jake did not want anything to do with him. His mum and dad had invited him to many barbecues and family days out but as soon as he found out Jeremy and Penny would be around, he declined their invitation.

  Amelia told him that she did not know why he bothered asking what her thoughts were when he already knew the answer.

  The men at the station imagined that she was a lesbian as she kept herself to herself, and since moving from Derbyshire, she was a good team worker and well liked. No one knew anything about her background and she was a bit of a Tomboy type but mixed well with the other WPC’s. She was interested in motorbikes, and some of her colleagues had seen her at weekends heading for the coast.

  Amelia would keep her male colleagues at arm’s length and when it came down to office parties, socialising and such like, she would go to the night out but stick around the women. She did not realize that this had the opposite effect and it tended to draw them in.

  She had a secret, one she wanted to hide from everybody. She did not want anybody to get close enough to her to find out about her past, and never talked about her boyfriends or family.

  CHAPTER 8

  Jake plopped down on the bench in his front garden awaiting his brother’s arrival. He glanced round the garden admiring the perennials that Emily had planted a few years ago.

  It was heart wrenching to see her fade away, struggling to breathe and eat at the same time, but she had a brave heart, even if weak. He had never imagined, until that time, of the heart being so precious until he had gone with Emily to have her heart scans, and he had seen with his own eyes the heart pumping and the destroyed muscles.

  When he thought about his heart, he just knew it was there doing its job in his body. When he saw Emily’s heart on the monitor and it struggling to pump the blood, he realised he would look at his heart and health in a very different way.

  The sadness in his heart was soul destroying, when the Specialist Heart Failure Consultant said that when the time came she would not have heart attack. The heart would just stop as if she were sleeping; there would be no pain, nothing.

  Those first few days when she came out of hospital he was too scared to sleep. He would lay listening to her heart beating. She had to have several pillows to prop her up in bed because when she lay flat her breathing weakened. If she slipped down the bed, he could hear the difference, and would lovingly be awake to help prop her up again.

  He had tried to take her out in the fresh air in the garden every day to see the sun shimmering through the clouds. She loved to feel the sun on her face, she had been too ill to take on holiday, but she would imagine being in the places, she loved. She would imagine being in Mykonos, walking down the narrow cobbled streets. Amelia loved sitting in the bars or restaurants watching the exhibitionists strutting their stuff, watching the world go by under the Aegean sun.

  The sound of gravel scrunching, his daydream shattered by Jeremy’s car screeching up onto the drive, and Jake hurried across the lawn to meet him at the door.

  “Look Jeremy we have to set all this being at loggerheads with each other to one side because I have to sit you down and tell you something very important, so can you come inside now and I will get you a drink,” Jake said nervously.

  Jeremy was spitting feathers and roared, “Look I’m not particularly bothered about coming inside, in fact I don’t want to, just what the hell is wrong, just tell me now. Spit it out!”

  “Jeremy you have to come inside and sit down.” Jake was fumbling for words and did not know what to say. “There is no easy way for me to tell you this, and I’ve got Amelia here to help me break this devastating news. I am so very sorry Jeremy, and it’s very painful for me to tell you this, its Penny, she’s been murdered.”

  Jeremy keeled over, he was distraught, plummeted into his worst nightmare, tears started running down his face and he was in complete shock, as if he was in searing pain. Jake wrapped his arm around his brother to comfort him, which was very hard for him after such a long time with no contact.

  Jeremy cried out, “No, you’re wrong Jake, how do you know its Penny. It cannot be her you have it all wrong, not my Penny. No...”

  “I’m sorry but it is Penny. Oliver Blackwell called me to the crime scene personally, he recognised her from your wedding, and I’ve identified her at the scene of crime.”

  He cried profusely, snot running down his face, uttering Penny’s name repeatedly, and he cried until there were no tears left.

  Amelia went into the kitchen where Maria was mashing a pot of tea and was grateful for the company. She had been walking around aimlessly making herself busy by making a carrot and coriander soup, and had brought with her some crusty rolls. Frank had to eat regular as he was a diabetic and she did not want him getting ill so she brought ingredients to make his favourite soup with her to cheer him up.

  The smell of the soup wafting through from t
he kitchen made them all hungry, despite their grief they all agreed to have a bowl of soup with a crusty roll. They all sat around the dining table and although not feeling like eating, they made an effort to please Maria.

  After they had eaten, Jake got whisky from the cabinet for Jeremy as he remembered Jeremy liked a touch of the good stuff. He would not be going any place tonight and a few swigs would not do him any harm as his mum had made up Jake’s guest room so that Jeremy could stay over.

  Jeremy could not believe that Penny was dead, a corpse, and he said that he wanted to see her. Jake told him that he could not see her yet because the forensics would have to do their work and close the scene of crime. He would have to wait until the crime scene investigators, forensics had finished off photographing at the morgue, and forensics examined her and collected all the evidence.

  “Look Jeremy you must be all over the place, you need to take some time out, have a rest. Let me have your door keys, and Amelia and I will look around your place. Mum and dad are here to stay with you and see that you are all right, and Rachel is coming over soon. Amelia and I will go to your house to save the police breaking in. We will see whether it gives us any clues as to what happened to Penny. Do you remember her saying anything about what she was going to do whilst you were away?”

  “No nothing out of the ordinary, she did say she might sort quotes out for having the kitchen tiled, but I said to wait because we couldn’t afford to do it for a couple of months. Jake, how could someone do this to Penny? She did not have any enemies; everyone loved Penny and she would do anything for anyone. She was too good for me; she would go out of her way to please me. Penny was the perfect wife.”

  “We don’t know how these things happen Jeremy, whether it’s a random thing, targeted, or whether she was stalked. We have to investigate, but don’t worry we will find the person that killed her we will promise you that, won’t we Amelia.”