Remorseless Read online

  Remorseless

  A Cotton & Silk Thriller

  David George Clarke

  Gupole Publications

  Copyright © 2017 David George Clarke

  ISBN 978-1-912406-14-2

  All rights reserved

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of any of the characters or places to real persons living or dead or to real places is purely 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.

  For Gail, with love.

  Contents

  REMORSELESS

  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

  Afterword

  Books by David George Clarke

  Acknowledgments

  REMORSELESS

  Chapter One

  Wednesday, 10 March 2015

  Former Detective Chief Inspector Mike Hurst was not a happy retiree. It had been seven months since the total cock-up that saw serial killer Olivia Freneton avoid capture in what should have been a straightforward arrest; seven months since she evaporated into thin air, leaving behind her the mayhem of one officer dead, one severely injured and two others incapacitated. Seven torturous shitty months.

  And it was down to him: he had been the boss.

  As the Board of Inquiry had been all too keen to point out, if Mandy Gwo, the diminutive Chinese prostitute the team was meant to be protecting, hadn’t launched herself at Freneton like some crazed martial-arts fighter and stabbed her in the hand, the body count would almost certainly have been higher. Without the girl’s frenzied attack, Freneton would probably have systematically worked her way through all of them. Whenever he thought of that scenario, which was often, Hurst would shudder and reach for the whisky bottle, an increasingly frequent companion since he had been more or less forced to retire.

  In the soulless interview room used for the inquiry, the unfailing brilliance of the twenty-twenty hindsight dished out by the prat of a chief superintendent from Internal Investigation Branch was as galling as it was smug. Of course it could have been handled better, of course if the armed response unit had been contacted five minutes earlier they would have been on hand, of course they could have … what? Could have what? There was much they could have done differently, but in the heat of the moment with the girl’s life at stake, snap decisions had to be taken, and no one on the team had hesitated. What none of them had foreseen was the extent of Freneton’s brutality.

  Hurst put down his fishing rod and shifted his bulk on the thin plastic cushion tied to his rowing dinghy’s wooden seat. He had never fished in his life before retiring; now it was part of his routine. Not really a passion, since he never caught much, more of a time-filler, the hours spent bobbing on the waters of one of the Lake District’s many meres and tarns were his way of trying to put the ignominious end to his otherwise noteworthy career behind him.

  Thirty-three years; a working lifetime of policing, most of it as a detective. He was old school, he didn’t deny it, but his methods had still got results even if they hadn’t involved hours glued to some screen. DI Rob McPherson had been the same. A dyed-in-the-wool no-nonsense copper; tough as old boots, but ultimately, not tough enough. It had taken Freneton just one savage blow with a side-handle baton to McPherson’s nose, followed by another to his head, to cause so much internal cranial bleeding that he died within minutes.

  Hurst lit a cigarette — he’d started smoking again after several years of abstinence — and retrieved his hip flask from his rucksack. He took a swig from it and shivered. What the hell was he doing sitting in a rowing boat on a bleak day in March? Why was he putting up with temperatures in single figures and a stiffening wind that made it feel like Siberia? Wallowing in self-pity, that’s what he was doing. And declining into a sad old fool. He wasn’t even sixty and yet he looked washed up, his vitality drained.

  He needed to get a grip; he wasn’t the only one whose life had been wrecked. Neil Bottomley, the detective sergeant Freneton whacked in the teeth, had not recovered his former easy-going manner, while Jennifer Cotton, the bright young detective constable against whom the bulk of Freneton’s wrath had been aimed for unmasking her as a serial killer, was still convalescing. At least she was in Sardinia, soaking up the sun no doubt, even in March. The girl had a number of things going for her, not the least of which was a doting and mega-rich stepfather.

  Jennifer was a bright girl with the potential to become an excellent detective. Currently she had been poached by The Met’s Art Fraud Squad in London, or at least that was where she was going once she’d recovered. Hurst didn’t think much of the idea; too airy-fairy. Jennifer needed good, solid, on-the-ground experience as a detective if she wanted to get on. Then again, she was young; there was time. A couple of years checking out paintings and traipsing around auction houses should be enough to make her see sense and bring her running back. He’d give her a call, see how she was getting on, extol the virtues of being a real detective.

  He shrugged in defeat as he stowed his fishing rod — the fish seemed to have migrated to somewhere warmer and he didn’t blame them. His wife Lynda was of the same mind; she’d been on about a winter holiday somewhere in the sun. Hurst wasn’t sure he fancied it: always too busy with one investigation or another, he’d never been much of a one for holidays. There was no denying he owed it to her; he’d been even more difficult to live with than usual since his retirement and she had stoically borne the brunt of his introspection as she let him try to work his way through it. She had seen it all before — police officers’ wives frequently got the thin end of a frustratingly uncompromising wedge — but she was devoted to him and he knew it. When he got home, he’d go online and find somewhere warm for them to go. He’d heard Thailand was good, and cheap too. Time to spread their wings and explore farther afield than their usual Skegness.

  Rather than start the outboard, he decided to row the half mile to the moorings. The exercise would warm him up. As his muscles began to complain, he thought of Derek Thyme, the young, black detective constable who had been the fourth person in the car that awful night. Derek had been next after Rob to gain Freneton’s attention. He’d hauled the Chinese girl out of the car from in front of the bitch’s nose, but Freneton was unfazed. Having seen to Rob, she’d sprung from the car and faced up to Derek, taking him by surprise with a well-aimed kick to his crotch. He’d recovered in time to use his brilliant sprinti
ng skills to race after her, knowing she was hunting for Jennifer, and it was only his speed that prevented her from kicking Jennifer to death. And that speed had been noticed: Derek was currently shortlisted for the UK squad for next year’s Olympics in Rio. Recognising this, the force had given him what was effectively a desk job in a fraud squad in London. Mixed blessings, thought Hurst. Thyme was no desk jockey, but the hours would help his training. He shivered; he certainly didn’t envy Derek pounding the track in the current temperatures.

  When he reached the moorings, Hurst was breathing heavily from the exertion. He attached the mooring rope to his buoy and waved to Jock, the weather-beaten boatman who ferried owners to the jetty. Now he was up in the Lakes once or twice a week, Hurst had taken to leaving his boat on moorings rather than go to the effort of hauling it out of the water. It made sense and the fees were negligible.

  “Catch much, Mike?” said Jock, eyeing Hurst’s rucksack, his Glaswegian accent as harsh as the cries of the screeching gulls.

  “Nothing left to catch, Jock. You buggers have fished the place out.”

  “Ach, there’s plenty if ye know where ta look,” said Jock, tapping the side of his craggy nose. “I’ll come out wi ya next time, if it’d please ya. Show ya a few tricks o’ the trade.”

  “I’ll hold you to that,” said Hurst, nodding his delight. Jock wasn’t known for his willingness to pass on his skills. “I’ll be up next week.”

  Otley in West Yorkshire, where Hurst and his wife had moved to four months previously to be closer to Lynda’s relatives, was about an hour and three quarters’ drive from the Lakes. Hurst was a skilled driver, having taken all the police courses, and although the A65 was a fast road with some notorious black spots, he knew them all and was instinctively alert to them. The idea of calling Jennifer Cotton had lifted his spirits. He was fond of the girl and still remembered with embarrassment when Freneton, still a police superintendent and as yet undiscovered as a killer, had insisted to the boss, Chief Superintendent Pete Hawkins, that Jennifer be hauled across the coals for not revealing she was Henry Silk’s daughter. Henry Silk, TV star and number one suspect in the murder investigation that had shattered lives and put Hurst where he was today. Jennifer had stood up for herself well, but her world had collapsed around her.

  Eleven miles west of Otley, the A65 curves gently southwards before running along the south side of Chelker reservoir, a man-made lake several hundred yards long. As Hurst approached it in the gloom of the overcast March evening, the traffic was light, enabling him to stay just above the 60 mph speed limit. Glancing in his Ford Explorer’s rear-view mirror, he saw the single headlight of a motorcycle that had caught up with him and was following too closely. Why doesn’t the idiot overtake? he thought, irritated by the invasion of the personal space around his speeding vehicle, there’s plenty of room and no lights coming from the other direction.

  His phone rang, distracting him. It must be his wife checking on where he was. He pressed the button on the steering column to engage the hands-free set.

  “Lyn, I—”

  “Hello, Mike. Do you recognise my voice? I’m sure you do. It’s in all your nightmares.”

  Hurst frowned, trying to process the information while still distracted by the damn motorcycle. “Freneton?” he said after a second’s pause. “What …? Where …?”

  “Ah, DCI Hurst, the last time we spoke you were trying to persuade me to give myself up. Do you remember? I’m sure you do. Well, let me congratulate you; you should feel privileged.”

  “What the hell do you mean, Freneton? Where are you?”

  “You’re the first on my list, Mike Hurst, a list that is about to get shorter. Goodbye, I hope you can swim.”

  The motorcycle accelerated round Hurst’s car, cut in sharply and braked hard. Hurst reacted instinctively, whipping the steering wheel to the left in the direction of the reservoir wall. As he did, there was a muffled bang from beneath his car. He jumped on the brake pedal, but it hit the floor, as useless as the now unresponsive steering wheel in his hands. With no brakes and no steering, the Explorer careered on its course, crashing through the low, dry-stone wall separating the road from the reservoir and plunging into the deep water. Mike Hurst made no attempt to escape: he couldn’t — the force of the car hitting the water had deployed his airbag, but with the unnatural angle of the impact, his head hit the driver’s door window sufficiently hard to knock him out. As the car sank into the freezing water, he drowned without regaining consciousness.

  After pressing the button on the remote detonator, Olivia Freneton twisted the powerful BMW’s accelerator. Glancing in her nearside mirror, she saw the out-of-control Explorer crash through the wall and begin its plunge.

  One down, she thought, as the motorcycle roared over the slight rise at the reservoir’s eastern end and headed south to Birmingham.

  Chapter Two

  The same day

  Mandy Gwo felt more secure than she had at any time since she left China, more secure in fact than she could ever remember. Instead of punishing her for selling her body, the gods had rewarded her, lifted her out of the grim downward spiral of debt and depravity that had been her life in the months since her arrival at Dover crammed into a filthy container with sixty others. Not just lifted her out of it but given her a new start with a new name, and it was all legal, approved by the authorities, initiated by them. England was certainly a wonderful place as far as Mandy was concerned; a land of plenty.

  The lucky break for Mandy was being picked up by the crazy woman who wanted sex with her out in some dark woods. It hadn’t seemed like a lucky break at the time; the woman had intended to kill her, although for what reason, Mandy still didn’t understand.

  According to the police, it was a close-run thing. They had been watching and moved in on the car just in time. Mandy could remember the silence of the eerie woods exploding into deafening screams and shouts as she was ripped from the car by a huge black man. Then the crazy woman with the pretty name — Olivia — had burst from the car, kicked the black man hard in the balls, and set about beating up the other men, policemen, who had arrived out of nowhere.

  Once it had dawned on Mandy that the crazy woman had meant to kill her, she went crazy herself. She pulled out the stiletto knife she always kept hidden in a sheath sewn into her belt and charged at her. The woman was quick; she blocked Mandy’s arm with her own, diverting the knife away from its target and into her hand. But despite the blood and what must have been a lot of pain from the deep cut, the woman managed to hit Mandy under the chin with some sort of cosh. After that, Mandy knew nothing until she regained consciousness in the back of an ambulance where a young policewoman with a pointy face like a rat was bending over her.

  “Ah, Mandy, you’re back with us.”

  “How you know name?” she croaked.

  “ID in your handbag in the car, love. Looks a bit dodgy to me; you could be in a spot of trouble, but we won’t worry about that now. How’s the mouth feeling?”

  “Mouf feel funny,” said Mandy through her swollen gums and tongue.

  “Not surprised. You lost a few teeth and took a bloody great bite out of your tongue, so the paramedic said. He’s given you plenty of painkillers, so you shouldn’t be feeling too much pain right now. We’ll soon be at the hospital; they’ll sort you out.”

  What puzzled Mandy was how friendly the police were to her. If she’d stabbed someone in China, even in self-defence, which it sort of was, she’d have taken a few beatings from the police in addition to the one she’d had. Here, they treated her like she’d done a good thing; saved several lives, they’d said. And no, she wasn’t in any trouble, just as long as she told them everything that had happened.

  After that, there had been visits from a social worker, an immigration officer, a lawyer who said she was representing her without wanting any money, and some other police officers who wanted to know all about the gang she worked for, how they ran her, where they lived. They said if s
he cooperated, since she’d been so brave and stopped the crazy woman from killing anyone else, they’d not only let her stay in England, but also they’d give her a new name, a new passport and find her a job so she didn’t have to work on the streets. They’d even find her a place to live in another city.

  So Mandy Gwo had become Kitty Lee. They moved her to Birmingham, housed her in a small clean flat in a high-rise council block and found her a job entering data onto a computer for a marketing company. It was boring work, but anything was better than the streets, and the company paid her for it without beating her up. Her social worker told her that because she was a bright girl, once her English had improved, they’d look at getting her something better, something more challenging.

  The new Kitty sat back from her keyboard in the large office where she now worked and took a small mirror from her handbag to admire her new teeth, something she still did several times a day, even now, months after her life had changed. The crazy woman had done her a big favour when she hit her in the mouth. Mandy’s teeth had been twisted and yellow; Kitty’s were perfectly straight and white: beautiful, like a movie star.