Killer on the Fens Read online

  KILLER ON THE FENS

  A gripping crime thriller full of twists

  (DI NIKKI GALENA BOOK 4)

  JOY ELLIS

  First published 2016

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this.

  ©Joy Ellis

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  http://www.joffebooks.com/contact/

  THERE IS A GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH SLANG IN THE BACK OF THIS BOOK FOR US READERS.

  AVAILABLE NOW

  DI Nikki Galena Book 1

  CRIME ON THE FENS

  https://www.amazon.co.uk/CRIME-gripping-detective-thriller-suspense-ebook/dp/B01H98SG5G/

  https://www.amazon.com/CRIME-gripping-detective-thriller-suspense-ebook/dp/B01H98SG5G/

  A NEW CRIME THRILLER WITH A COMPELLING DETECTIVE WHO WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO AVENGE HER DAUGHTER

  DI Nikki Galena Book 2

  SHADOW OVER THE FENS

  https://www.amazon.co.uk/SHADOW-gripping-crime-thriller-suspense-ebook/dp/B01HHA49SY/

  https://www.amazon.com/SHADOW-gripping-crime-thriller-suspense-ebook/dp/B01HHA49SY/

  TWO BRUTAL KILLERS ARE LOOSE ON THE FENS BUT WHO CAN DI NIKKI GALENA TRUST?

  Detective Nikki Galena’s friend and neighbour meets a tragic end but there’s more to his death than meets the eye . . .

  And someone terrible from DS Joseph Easter’s past is back . . .

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The first three DI Nikki Galena books

  Character List

  Author’s note on the locations

  Glossary of English Slang for US readers

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to Lynne Nicholson who delivered a swift wake-up call at exactly the right time. Thank you, Lynne, on behalf of myself and Nikki Galena.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Detective Inspector Nikki Galena’s face was a mask of concentration as she accelerated her powerful car along the dangerous fenland lanes. Long shadows were forming as the evening drew in, and she was grateful that she’d actually paid attention during her advanced driving course.

  This was the second time in a week that she had received a call from the nursing home about her father’s failing health. ‘Wicked bloody disease!’ Nikki cursed as she eased the car around a deceptively sharp bend. The Alzheimer’s had stolen most of his once astute brain years ago, but now he was in what the home called ‘end stage,’ and although she had been told this could go on for a long time, her gut feeling said otherwise.

  As soon as she saw the smart, painted sign for the Glenfield Nursing Home, Nikki wondered what she would find when she got there. There had been something in the voice of the specialist nurse who had phoned her. Nothing was said, but she had detected an added anxiety in the tone and had begun to prepare herself.

  All her visits to her father were harrowing. The mere fact that he didn’t know her was bad enough, but when she remembered what a strong man he had been, it broke her heart. The airman, a fighter pilot who had flown Harrier jump jets in the Falklands War, now lay in bed or roamed the hallways of the home, with the memory circuits of his brain crashing and burning out.

  Nikki pulled into a parking space and turned off the engine. His health wasn’t the only thing that was worrying her. Recently she had been convinced that there was something he desperately wanted to tell her. Sadly it seemed that he had left it too long, and now she might never know what it was, other than that it concerned someone called Eve. In one scarily lucid moment, he had grabbed her wrist and begged her to “Find Eve!” For a second or two his eyes had cleared and shone with a frightening intensity. “For pity’s sake, Nikki, you’re a bloody detective! Find Eve!”

  But what could Nikki say to him? She didn’t know anyone by that name.

  She locked the car and hurried up to the main doors, where to her concern she saw Molly Crane, her father’s personal nurse, running towards her.

  ‘DI Galena! Thank God you got here so quickly.’ The nurse’s face was etched with worry. ‘The situation has altered since we rang you.’ She turned and rushed Nikki towards the lift. ‘I didn’t ring again as I knew you’d be driving.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Nikki, not really wanting to know the answer.

  ‘He’s had a seizure.’ Molly stabbed her finger on the button and the lift door sighed open.

  ‘Were you with him?’ asked Nikki, desperate to know that her dad had not been alone or frightened.

  ‘Oh yes. I haven’t left him for a minute. I was just checking his medication and, without any warning, he had a catastrophic reaction.’ Molly Crane shook her head. ‘It’s not something we expect to see in the late stages, but nevertheless it happened.’

  The lift juddered to a halt and, as they hurried out, the nurse explained what she meant. ‘It’s a moment of intense emotional pain. We think it’s caused by a flash of realisation, of true awareness of their plight, and it triggers extreme distress. It usually ends in the patient lashing out, either physically or verbally.’ She looked at Nikki. ‘Your father knocked over his bedside table and fought to get out of bed. By the time I raised the alarm, he had collapsed. The doctor is with him now and there’s an ambulance on its way.’

  Minutes later, Nikki watched dumbly as the doctor checked her father’s vital signs, then lifted the lids and stared into his unfocussed eyes. She didn’t have to ask how he was doing. The expression on the doctor’s face said it all.

  ‘He’s not going to pull through this time, is he?’ Nikki was no fool. She had spent more time than she would have liked in and around hospitals, and knew a lot about illness. ‘I’m guessing he’s had a cerebral haemorrhage?’

  ‘Massive, I’d say, and he’s weakening.’

  Nikki looked at the man and whispered, ‘Then please just let him go. He’s been in hell for years. Don’t try to bring him back now he has the chance of freedom.’

  The doctor hesitated, then looked down at his patient. After a moment he said, ‘I agree. He wouldn’t survive the trip to hospital. We’ll just make him as comfortable as possible.’

  Molly went out of the room and Nikki could hear her speaking to someone. Then she returned, closed the door and softly said, ‘I’ve cancelled the ambulance.’

  Nikki took her father’s hand and smiled at him, and suddenly the frail husk of a human being became her
dad again, her lovely father, Wing Commander Frank Reed.

  ‘Nikki . . .’ Molly’s hand was on her arm, and Nikki was vaguely aware that the nurse had never called her by her first name before. ‘His breathing’s changed.’

  ‘Cheyne-Stokes respiration,’ said the doctor solemnly. ‘His heart is failing.’

  For one moment, Nikki thought he would stop the awful irregular breathing and wake up, but instead the eyes flickered for a moment, then he let out a long sigh. She looked up at Molly, and saw a strange expression pass across the nurse’s face. She’d heard it too. There had been one word hidden deep in that sigh.

  Eve.

  The doctor gently touched his neck. ‘He’s gone.’

  Nikki didn’t move. Then her mind began to race. There had been times when she had prayed for him to die. It hadn’t been a selfish prayer, she just knew what an independent and proud man he was, and how having strangers attending to his every need would have utterly destroyed what was left of him. And now he had gone. Nikki felt terrible guilt at the relief that was flooding through her. And she also felt an irrational anger, because he had left her with an unanswered question, a stranger’s name in his dying breath.

  Then the anger disappeared as she looked at her father’s ashen face. She remembered the good times, the fun they had had when she was a child, and the unconditional love that he had always given her.

  ‘Bye, Dad.’ She leaned across and kissed his forehead. ‘And if it helps, I will find her for you. Somehow I will find Eve. I promise.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  The young man knew the treacherous marsh paths better than most. Especially at night.

  He’d spent all his early years around Castor Fen and Flaxton Mere, but this evening was going to be the last time that he would tramp those boggy, uneven tracks.

  As he loped along, his scrawny body casting a stick-thin shadow in the moonlight, he decided that it had all been worth it. All the lies, the deceit, the begging, borrowing and mainly stealing. All worth it. By tomorrow morning, he would be gone from here, and for the first time in his life, he would have some money in his pocket, some real money.

  Prior to tonight, his whole existence had been one shitty mess, and although his problems were not quite over, he could at last allow himself a little smile. He was nearly there.

  The moonlight made the desolate landscape appear weird and dreamlike. It reflected on dark pools of brackish water, making them look as wholesome as waste engine oil.

  Finally he came to a narrow path that led away from the sea-bank; the long, high flood defence that formed a barrier between the salt-marsh and solid ground. He looked up and saw the strange, imposing silhouette of the old deserted airfield, RAF Flaxton Mere.

  As he got closer, he could feel a nervousness steal over him. He’d been coming here for months, but it still gave him the creeps. Dark and brooding, the old buildings had been left to rot after World War II, but incredibly they had survived. Right now one of them was doing a great job providing a pretty clever hiding place for his big secret.

  The clusters of shrubby trees were getting thicker and he felt more relaxed as he blended into the shadowy thickets. He’d never yet met anyone out here, but there had been nights when he had been certain that he wasn’t alone. And it wasn’t anything to do with Flaxton Mere’s scary reputation, although it didn’t help growing up with a grandmother who firmly believed in ghosts and ghouls.

  He stopped in his tracks as a heavy curtain of night clouds blocked the moon. Then a shaft of moonlight escaped from the cloud, and like a spotlight to centre stage, he saw the rotting wooden door of the old storehouse. He moved stealthily across the stretch of open ground in front of the building, and slipped inside.

  It took him just a few minutes to retrieve his prize, and with a wider smile, he pushed the large package into his rucksack and hurried back outside. Now all he had to do was lie low until morning, and not be late for his two prearranged meetings. He exhaled stale breath. After that, he would be gone, like the proverbial thief in the night.

  He retraced his footsteps towards the perimeter fence of the airfield, then made his way towards one of several old concrete pillboxes that surrounded the place.

  With one last look around, he ducked down and went inside.

  As accommodation went, this would do very nicely for a night. Even the smell was not too bad. His own bedsit had smelt a lot worse after he’d had a skinful. Kicking some rubble and other rubbish to one side, he pulled a faded and tatty sleeping bag from his holdall and laid it on the floor. He crawled in, carefully taking the package with him, and felt almost comfortable.

  He didn’t expect to sleep. He didn’t want to. He didn’t dare. He just wanted to feel relatively safe. If he overslept and missed his meetings, then the consequences didn’t bear thinking about. And not only for him, but his old gran too.

  He curled up in a ball and congratulated himself. This place had been a stroke of bloody genius. No one ever came here. The locals, a rustic group of inbreds as far as he was concerned, never set foot on this desolate strip of land. According to them, it was the nerve centre of every ghostly and diabolical happening that folklore could come up with. He giggled at their stupidity. He’d lived in the town for long enough now to distance himself from his own rural background, and he loved his gran enough to forgive her anything, including her crackpot beliefs.

  He shifted around and tried to find a flatter area to lie on.

  No, there was nothing to fear out here, except perhaps him, and he was certainly not very nice to know.

  A sound outside suddenly made him sit up. It was an odd noise. It was recognisable alright, yet surely it could not be!

  With a grunt of concern, he scrambled out of the sleeping bag, stuffed his precious parcel into the loose waistband of his trousers, crouched down and hurried outside.

  He searched the sky for the source of the noise. It was definitely a plane. The heavens were almost cloud-free and the moon much lower than it had been. He could see nothing, but the distinctive roar of an engine was getting louder.

  In desperation, he clambered up onto the roof of the pillbox and stared around. It was not one of the jet fighters that, day and night, crashed through the Lincolnshire skies, and it sounded too powerful to be a light aircraft. Jesus! It was some kind of heavy-engined military plane and, shit, it was in trouble! The steady roar was suddenly irregular. A heart-stopping silence, then a stuttering choking as the engines struggled to cut in again.

  He spun around full-circle on the concrete roof, and his heart jumped when he remembered the state of the runways. Cracked, broken, non-existent in places. A death trap for anyone who thought they could bring a crippled plane down there.

  The deafening noise was all around him, and for the second time that night, he sweated with fear. The terrible cacophony stopped. He heard the sound of a rushing wind, then only silence.

  He stood, some seven or eight feet up in the air, like a great, stone jack-in-the-box. Then from a little way away, he heard a dull, earth-jarring thump, and he caught sight of flames flickering close to the remains of the old control tower.

  His hand flew to his mouth and adrenalin pumped through him.

  Everything that was important to him: the exchange, the pay-off, the threat to his gran, and the promised release from the stifling shithole that he had landed in, all screamed at him to run. But somewhere deep inside, in that under-used part of him that constituted his soul, he knew he had to go to the accident site. He wanted to help.

  But if there was ever going to be a time to choose, he never found out. The next sound sent him clambering and falling from the pillbox, and running away with his hands clasped tightly to his ears and his addled mind almost at breaking point.

  He was surrounded by the horrors of an air raid. The wailing sirens, urgent shouts and screaming, and all the horrible sounds of suffering that went with it. He didn’t understand, and he wasn’t waiting around for an explanation. He just ran.


  A short way ahead he could dimly make out a gap in the wire. Not lessening his speed, he turned and headed for it, then caught his foot in a snare of barbed wire and pitched forward into a pile of rubble. Pain coursing through his lacerated ankle, and still struggling to find his footing, he was suddenly aware that loose rocks and small stones were sliding away from under his worn and slippery-soled sneakers. Then his gut turned over, as he found himself hurtling downwards, cracking his elbows, knees and head against solid stone.

  Before his body crashed into the floor of the old ventilation shaft, he was vaguely aware that the only scream he could now hear was his own.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Nikki stared at Superintendent Greg Woodhall, and wondered how to tell him that she had no intention of taking the compassionate leave that he was offering her. The older man’s face was full of sympathy, but Nikki knew that time to herself was the last thing she needed. Naturally there were the funeral arrangements to make, but her father had been typical old-school RAF, ordered and methodical. The family solicitor had already assured her that he had “put his house in order” the moment the Alzheimer’s had reared its ugly head.

  ‘I’m owed some time off anyway. I’ll do what I have to do, but I really need to keep working, sir.’

  Greg peered over his glasses at her and nodded. ‘I’ve known you since you were a probationer, Nikki, so I expected that. But don’t forget, it’s a difficult time, and the grieving process takes everyone differently. When everything is arranged, by all means continue to work, but remember, if you need to take some time out, you can.’

  ‘Funny thing is I don’t actually feel anything right now — well, not in the same way I did when Hannah died.’ Memories of her daughter flooded round her and Nikki sat back in her chair and sighed. ‘Maybe it’s this job. From the moment we join up, we learn to deal with death, don’t we?’