White meat, p.1
White Meat, page 1
WHITE MEAT
Third in the DC Martin Webb trilogy
Sally Spedding
The right of Sally Spedding to be identified as the author of WHITE MEAT has been asserted by her under Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 1998.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © Sally Spedding 2021.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events or places is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted by any other form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author. Also, this book may not be hired out whether for a fee or otherwise in any cover other than supplied by the author.
Also available as a paperback, ISBN: 9798753039712
Front photograph: ‘lilartsy’
Published by DEATH WATCH BOOKS
Praise for Sally Spedding:
DOWNFALL
‘I could almost taste the fear as Delphine and Captain Valon investigated. Twists and turns galore.’ - Graham Watkins. Successful Author of ‘The Enemy Within’ and historical non-fiction
THE DEVIL’S GARDEN.
‘A really spine-chilling, absorbing story. Delphine is a really sparky character with guts and determination, bent on bringing the criminals to justice.’ Tricia Chappell. ‘Mystery People’ reviewer.
BLOOD AT BELTANE
‘Wow, Sally Spedding hits the spot once again. A clever tightly wound plot with many surprises. Delphine once more reveals hidden depths of endurance and great detective skills.’ - Tricia Chappell. ‘Mystery People’ reviewer.
THE NIGHTHAWK
‘True noir from Sally Spedding…like a cold breath on the back of the neck.’ - Adrian Magson. Bestselling Crime & Thriller author.
BLOODLINES
‘A complex mystery which both chills and entertains.’ - Thomas Waugh. Crime/thriller author
DEATH KNELL
‘A visceral, chilling novel with twists and turns, which keep the reader gripped from start to finish.’ - Christoph Fischer. Best-selling author & Llandeilo LitFest organiser.
CUT TO THE BONE
‘Sally Spedding has unquestionably got what it takes.’ - Crime Time
BEHOLD A PALE HORSE
‘Explores the fragility of love and humanity as mediaeval Europe’s apocalyptic mind-set gallops into the 20th century with brutal consequences. A thought-provoking journey into the macabre.’ - Dot Marshall-Gent. Former police officer, educator and ‘Mystery People’ reviewer
THE YELLOWHAMMER’S CRADLE
‘No-one does evil like Sally Spedding. Chilling. Seriously chilling. Fully 3D landscapes, full of menace in themselves, peopled by desperate characters…A very compelling read, hard to put down.’ - Thorne Moore. Author of best-selling chillers
MALEDICTION
‘An intense, intelligent, visceral thriller from the get-go. If you thought Dan Brown was the last word in clerical depravity, think again.’ - Peter Guttridge. Reviewer and crime/thriller writer
COLD REMAINS
‘This is a horror story and a mystery. If you like well-written, creepy thrillers, this is one to remember.’ - Geoff Jones. Eurocrime
COME AND BE KILLED
‘Sally Spedding is a font of creepy stories, the kind of tales which wheedle their way into your mind days and weeks later.’ - Western Mail
PREY SILENCE
‘Sally Spedding has written an excellent, creepy chiller of what can happen to ex-pats who fall foul of their new neighbours. The perfect gift for those who boast about their French idyll they’re about to live.’ - Carla McKay. Daily Mail
A NIGHT WITH NO STARS
An alarming story of surprises and shocks.’ - Gerald Kaufman. The Scotsman
CLOVEN
‘Sally Spedding has been credited with being a latter-day Du Maurier.’
- Crime Squad
WRINGLAND
‘A tale of chilling menace and powerful atmosphere in haunted fen country. A ghost story handled with real assurance.’ - Barry Foreshaw
Welsh-born, award-winning Sally Spedding’s dark crime/thrillers, short stories and poetry are inspired by Wales, also France where she spent part of each year in the Eastern Pyrenees.
www.sallyspedding.com
It is a terrible thing
To be so open: it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.
‘The Rabbit Catcher’ by Sylvia Plath
When it’s a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
Voltaire.
PROLOGUE
23rd December 1962.
Christmas in Massie Heights is no different from any other Sunshine State summer day, when its trailer park’s residents take their chances spread their talents into Caboolture and beyond. To the exotic gardens where carelessness reigns. Where drink and conviviality relax the fun-lovers and reward the vigilant. She’s one of the best is Mylene Gerard. Always has been. Small for her age and pretty too, with blonde curls bouncing on her head as she cycles over the bumpy ground to where dirt meets asphalt, softening under her tyres.
Not her bike, but who cares? She helped herself to it outside the Stores only yesterday. Easy as pie. Tore off the giveaway stickers from Bundaberg and got the boy next door to do a re-spray for a peep of her puss. Now she’s on her way, itching to feel the weight of more pickings in her skirt pocket. To count each coin and bury them for the only way out of this stink-hole. She often dreams of owning a big, white house on a hill with porcelain wash basins in the bedrooms and running water. Flushing toots and a kitchen lined with a proper cooker and refrigerator full of cool, fresh tucker. Not like the rice and flies her mother dreams up when there’s nothing else going.
*
Coolmore Street’s arcade is full of punters, drifting in and out of the various stores selling carpets, furniture and other household goods imported from the east. Mylene wheels the bike along rather than risk leaving it, all the while fixed on two Pom grasshoppers who even walk differently from the rest. Never mind how they speak. The woman’s crocodile-skin shoulder bag sits open, unprotected against her butt, while the guy’s wallet protrudes from his shorts’ back pocket. Their holiday brochures haven’t mentioned Massie Heights, otherwise they’d know better than to come here for Christmas shopping, especially being so careless.
Job done.
She then makes a quick turn, and with that block of daylight at the end of the arcade beckoning, she’s out and under the sun again, pedalling till her leg muscles sting with pain. Up and up, on dry dirt once more, not daring to dismount, until those half-wrecked trailers and their webs of washing come into view. Jean Gerard is waiting by the battered door to number twelve. A living skeleton, barefoot. Some mother she is, with a tinnie in each hand. Dead eyes and a pleading whimper, falling on young, deaf ears…
Note: Please note that Queensland time is 10 hours in advance of UK time.
One
Monday 24th July 2006. 08:04 hrs.
The freak weather still gripping a tetchy, sweating Europe for too long, had yet to break. In Great Malvern, the past fortnight of thick heat, windless days and perspiring nights had not only left newly-promoted DI Martin Webb feeling drained of energy but also his fourteen-month-old daughter Gaia with a puzzling rash on her upper body. Only yesterday, Dora, her mother, had pored over holiday brochures whose more northerly destinations guaranteed clouds and rain.
“Shall I book that little cottage by Loch Fyne?” she suggested at breakfast, settling their daughter into her high chair.
“No midges, that’s all I ask,” he grinned while negotiating his way past the huge, grey buggy, which had usurped his precious Raleigh Tourer bike. “We’ve got the nipper now, remember?”
Dora didn’t return his smile.
“As if I could forget.”
She handed a Marmite ‘soldier’ to their pink-faced daughter, who promptly threw it on the linoleum to land face down.
“I’m taking her to the Doc again, OK?” Dora said as he picked it up, fetched a cloth and wiped over the stain. “It could be nettle rash or a reaction to those jabs.”
Having read up on all the pros and cons of the MMR vaccinations, she and Martin both agreed they were a Good Thing. Now, seeing Gaia so upset, he wasn’t so sure.
“I’ll do it if you like.”
“You’ve got the Parrott case, surely?”
The way she said it made him stop. Suddenly those plastic baubles strung across the front of their daughter’s buggy were too bright. The expression on the soft toy monkey’s face a challenging sneer. Already he felt sweat leak into his clean blue shirt. A blaze in a terraced house in Hobday Road had killed two small children left alone by their mother who’d gone to the newsagents. Stephen Parrott their estranged, out-of-work father and chief suspect, was on the run. Karen Parrott his wife, under sedation.
The South Worcestershire Division was struggling with a staff shortage and had asked Malvern’s small Serious Crimes Unit for help. Having trawled through the charred wreckage with the forensics team and witnessed the pitiful paraphernalia of young lives lost, Martin resolved to be a better, more attentive Dad. To give his little family what they deserved...
He turned to blow Dora and the still fretful Gaia a kiss.
“Next time, I promise.” But there was nothing reassurin
“You always say that. You must think I’m thick.”
“Course I don’t.” And seeing her and Gaia together like that, so alike in their colouring, and so beautiful, made his heart slow down.
“If you must know,” she added, wiping their daughter’s face, “I’ve got really bad vibes about this one.”
“Look, Dodo, we’ve got a good team on the case…”
“You mean Jane Thorogood?”
“For God’s sake…”
Yet it wouldn’t need a MENSA member to see how that former WPC was now his most trusted right-hand colleague. How much his respect for her had grown since her overdue elevation to Detective Constable had spurred her to even greater commitment. This, despite an invalid husband and boisterous eight-year-old son.
“I know my old boss isn’t around,” he said, more to himself than Dora. “But at least our Welsh boyo has gone…” He meant DC Bryn Griffiths who, with too much in the bank and not enough in the conscience department, had given up work to manage his wife’s show jumping career. “So, you mustn’t worry, OK?”
He then grabbed his suit jacket from the hook next to an array of redundant baby coats knitted by Dora’s widowed Mum, and opened the front door on to yet another heatwave. A sky above North Hill almost indecently blue. At ground level, the pavement was already hot, and small shadows cast by street lamps, jutted darkly into Laurel Road like a succession of knives.
This grim take on things was down to Chris Mears. Or, rather because his one-time best mate from schooldays in Blackheath and first working years in the City, hadn’t communicated with his own mother for almost two weeks. According to her, they’d always been close, despite her divorce from his stepfather four years ago. Even his treasured cards and airmail letters from Australia lay safe in her dressing table drawer to pore over when she felt lonely. Now, she was worried sick.
*
As Martin disabled the alarm on his blue and cream-coloured Mini, he recalled yesterday’s phone call from the woman who now lived in a rural hamlet near Worcester. She’d sounded older, more confused than how he’d remembered her, repeating her apologies for bothering him, but with her only child so far away in Brisbane, and no-one taking her seriously, who else could she turn to?
Martin glanced in his rear-view mirror to see Dora with Gaia in her arms, staring after him as if she might never see him again. As if already sensing a trip halfway round the world was already on his mind…
They’d made tentative plans to tie the knot in October now that the deposit for Rose Cottage - their first unrented home - was with the solicitors, and an Exchange of Contracts promised soon. But right now, autumn seemed a lifetime away. Better get on with it, he thought, turning into the Police Station car park. Like the terminally ill or those on Death Row, because that’s what had kept him awake most of last night. A premonition of a future pierced by Pam Greener’s heartbreak and the realisation that this mother’s instinct combined with his own, pointed to a long haul down a dense, black tunnel. Chris Mears for whatever reason, wasn’t answering either his landline phone in his apartment, or his mobile. Even texts and voicemails had remained unanswered.
*
08:20 a.m. More flies than staff, and three fans working flat-out to send waves of warm air across the open-plan office where Martin’s desk was positioned between a door leading to the interview rooms and a coffee machine. Having checked his diary and made various notes for the day ahead, he then checked his desk phone where a message was waiting.
Hello?
And while DC Jane Thorogood delivered his first caffeine hit of the day, he pressed PLAY. The voice, definitely male, was pitched low, threatening. Catching him off guard.
“I won’t be warning you again, but someone close to you is in the gravest danger. Act now or else…” Timed at 08:32 hours. Twenty minutes ago.
While committing that threat’s third hearing to a new tape, Martin’s immediate thought was Stephen Parrott trying to sound posh. But why would that misper draw yet more attention to himself and risk being traced? Secondly, if it had been him, how come he’d known his direct line number? And what did ‘close to you’ mean?
He then discovered that mystery caller had blocked his ID.
“Warning me again? I don’t get it.”
Jane glanced at him as she deposited two sachets of sweeteners next to his full styrofoam cup.
“Could be a hoax,” she added unexpectedly. “We do get them, sir.”
Martin suddenly missed his late murdered boss, DI Alan Manson, whose shoes he’d so abruptly stepped into last year. That unusually modest man would have known what to do.
“Can you also ask Emma if she gave my number to anyone, and take this tape over to Clive. Personal only, at this stage, OK?”
*
Emma Pearson manning the switchboard, was new to the job just last week, while Clive Taylor, the veteran voice recognition expert was based in the CID’s separate unit in Malvern Link just five minutes away.
As Jane strode towards the main double doors, Martin had already made connections he didn’t want to make and seen that imagined tunnel’s mouth looming ever closer. Felt a chill increasing, despite the hot morning. While Jane was gone, he called Dora who was washing nappies and sounded fed up.
“Just take care,” he warned her, feeling foolish. “You and Gaia.”
“Why?”
A pause before he chickened out.
“Not sure. But keep your eyes open…”
“I’m only going to the Co-op then the library. See if some fresh air will do her good.”
“Love you, Dodo.”
“I told you, I’m not bloody Dodo…”
Ignoring that sting, he accessed the next message. This time, Chris’s mother, Pam Greener. More composed than yesterday, she’d be driving over from Barnfield with an item of post she felt he ought to see and, if convenient, would be in Malvern at eleven o’clock.
Great. Not.
In fifteen minutes he’d got a briefing on the Hobday Road case with Brian Philpot the Chief Superintendent, and another planned for Worcester at 13:00 hours.
Jane returned with the same frown in place. Her dark fringe damp against her forehead.
“That call,” she began. “Emma confirms it must have gone direct to you. She knows nothing about it.”
Martin groaned. What else did he expect? Normally he’d have asked Jon Holden, his ally from past cases, for a trace, but even he, as a DI would need authorisation. With the threat of merged constabularies having only recently evaporated, their budget was tighter than ever. The paperwork mountain increasing hourly. This would be seen as a whim, not priority.
“Did anyone ask her for my number?”
“No, sir.”
Emma was most likely still finding her feet. He’d have to see her in person, just to make sure.
“Dammit.”
Jane stared at him. “Sir. We’ve got little Kyle and Lauren Parrott left to fry in their own beds, their mother threatening to jump in the Severn because she couldn’t save them, and a possible psycho arsonist on the loose…”
Her anger triggered a hot blush under his collar. She was right, of course. But sometimes being right wasn’t always what one wants to hear.
“Chris Mears is more than just my mate,” Martin deflected. “He’s…”
“What exactly?” She sat down at her desk and turned the fan towards her. Her fringe flicked away from her now stern face.
“Part of my past. A pretty big part, actually.”
He’d never mentioned his own mother’s suicide to anyone apart from Dora and Chris. Her dark, glutinous blood eking out from under that bathroom door of the family home near Blackheath after his father had been banged up for piloting a passenger jet while drunk. His son’s guilty secret and, if he’d not called in at his then girlfriend’s house having sent off his application form for the Met, he’d have been home in time to stop Louisa Webb. Talk her through her anguish. Convince her that he could help pay the mortgage and give her something to live for. But no. That never happened. He knew just how Karen Parrott must be feeling...
