THEIR LOST DAUGHTERS a gripping crime thriller with a huge twist Read online

  THEIR LOST DAUGHTERS

  A gripping crime thriller with a huge twist

  DI Jackman & DS Evans Book 2

  JOY ELLIS

  First published 2017

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, 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.

  We hate typos too but sometimes they slip through. Please send any errors you find to [email protected]

  We’ll get them fixed ASAP. We’re very grateful to eagle-eyed readers who take the time to contact us.

  ©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.

  JACKMAN & EVANS BOOK 1

  THE MURDERER’S SON

  https://www.amazon.co.uk/MURDERERS-gripping-crime-thriller-twists-ebook/dp/B01LWY0PUJ/

  https://www.amazon.com/MURDERERS-gripping-crime-thriller-twists-ebook/dp/B01LWY0PUJ/

  "What if your mother was a serial killer?"

  A BLOODY KILLER SEEMS TO HAVE RETURNED TO THE LINCOLNSHIRE FENS

  Twenty years ago: a farmer and his wife are cut to pieces by a ruthless serial killer.

  Now: a woman is viciously stabbed to death in the upmarket kitchen of her beautiful house on the edge of the marshes.

  Then a man called Daniel Kinder walks into Saltern police station and confesses to the murder.

  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

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE

  OTHER BOOKS BY JOY ELLIS

  The DI Nikki Galena books

  Glossary of English Slang for US readers

  Character List

  FREE KINDLE BOOKS AND OFFERS

  DEDICATION

  I was so close to giving up. So, thank you, Jasper, for believing in me and for giving me the opportunity to do what I love.

  And thank you, Anne. Your amazing paragraph-pruning and word-weeding skills turn an overgrown flower bed into a thing of beauty!

  CHAPTER ONE

  For a second Jackman lay still. Then his eyes flew open and he grabbed his mobile phone from the bedside table. ‘Rowan Jackman.’

  ‘It’s Sergeant Danny Page here, Inspector. Sorry for the early call, but we’ve just received a report of a body on the beach over at Dawnsmere.’

  Jackman gritted his teeth. His present investigation involved a missing teenager. ‘A body, Sergeant?’

  There was the slightest pause. ‘Yes, sir, and I’m afraid it is a young woman, although that’s all we know until someone can get out there. I’ve got two cars responding, but I’m assuming you would like to deal with this?’

  Jackman was already out of bed. ‘I’m on my way, Sergeant. Would you please alert DS Evans for me and ask her to meet me at the scene? And you’d better get the pathologist and some SOCOs down there as well.’

  ‘Consider it done, sir.’

  His shower could wait. Jackman threw open his wardrobe and grabbed a pair of chinos, a warm shirt and a thick sweater. The coast was bitterly cold at this time of the year, especially just before dawn. He pulled them on, found a pair of hiking socks and ran down the wooden staircase and into the hall. He chose walking boots from the rack by the door, checked that he had his warrant card, mobile and wallet all safe in his pocket, and took his old Barbour wax jacket from the hook and pulled it on.

  He locked the door to his converted mill-house and ran across the drive to where his car was parked beneath a covered gazebo. He rarely used his garage, preferring the option of a quick getaway. Like now.

  * * *

  First light was a weak, watery and dismal affair, but today the chilly grey dawn was probably more appropriate than one of Mother Nature’s more dazzling displays. Jackman gazed around. For a moment or two he tried not to look at the very thing he had come there for.

  It would have been generous to call it a beach. Dawnsmere was a bleak spot, a narrow strip of sand and dunes sandwiched between the wild marsh and the cold, uninviting waters of the Wash. But even so, it had a strange beauty, even if that beauty was lonely and austere. The thing that always struck Jackman about these long stretches of fenland coastline was the absence of almost any indication of humanity. There were no colourful beach huts, no deckchairs, no cafés and no amusements, just the landscape and the sea. Right now, if you chose to ignore the presence of the police and their sad find, it looked almost primeval. Gathering himself, Jackman silently ordered his inner philosopher to retreat to a safe distance, and called upon the seasoned policeman to step forward and take charge.

  The dead girl lay on her side, her bloated face half buried in the wet, muddy sand. Her clothes clung to her in rags and her feet were bare. Jackman stared at the slender narrow ankles and saw scratches and cuts etched deep into the pale skin. He looked closer and frowned. There were bruises too, lots of them.

  He tried not to get ahead of himself. Foul play was always his first thought, but submersion in water could cause massive injuries to the body. He knew only too well that the tides could buffet a frail human against rocks and debris, inflicting all manner of trauma. Jackman reached into his jacket pocket and removed a photograph. The picture showed a slim youngster with shoulder-length light brown hair. A girl with laughing green eyes, a narrow, delicate nose and a wide toothy smile. He stared back down at the lifeless tangle of clothes and unnaturally white flesh and shook his head. It could be Shauna Kelly, but it would take more than a happy snap to identify her. He drew in a long sigh. Their missing girl had no tattoos, scars or other identifying marks, so they would have to resort to dental records, unless one of the distraught parents insisted on seeing her. Frankly, Jackman would walk over hot coals to prevent that happening.

  He looked at the body, trying to make some kind of positive connection with the smiling girl in the photo, but apart from similar length hair, there was nothing.

  ‘Wicked waste. Poor little kid.’ A uniformed officer was standing a little way away, viciously stabbing the toe of his boot over and over into the wet sand.

  Jackman recognised the man as being one of
the mess-room jokers, a right laugh-a-minute maestro under normal conditions.

  He looked at Jackman and hung his head. ‘Sorry, sir. Got three girls of my own.’

  Jackman threw him an understanding smile, followed by a lifeline. ‘Do me a favour, Constable? Go and see whether DS Evans has arrived yet.’

  The constable nodded, straightened up and loped away from the scene.

  Left alone with the girl, Jackman wondered, not for the first time, how they coped with so much death. Dead adults were bad enough, babies were beyond devastating, and children tore his heart out, but teenagers affected him in a different way altogether. There seemed to be so much loss attached to juveniles. They had nearly made it. Almost become what they were intended to be. All that potential was suddenly gone, their untapped talents wiped out in the blink of an eye and their young dreams stolen forever.

  The light breeze off the sea rippled the shallow puddles of water that surrounded the girl, making her sodden clothes move slightly. Just for a moment, in the poor light, she seemed to be alive.

  Jackman shivered, and then voices echoed across the narrow dune-edged beach and dragged him away from his sombre thoughts.

  DS Marie Evans was hurrying towards him, accompanied by the county’s forensic pathologist, Professor Rory Wilkinson. Jackman was glad that the man himself had turned out this morning and not delegated the task to another. Wilkinson was an oddball, but much better than his predecessor. Jackman had always struggled with Arthur Jacobs. He knew that the old pathologist was competent, and indeed very clever, but Jackman found him cold and spiritless, and working with him was hard going. Rory Wilkinson was at the other end of the spectrum, and once Jackman had seen past the high camp humour, he realised that Saltern-le-Fen was very lucky to have him.

  Not that there would be much in the way of banter today.

  Marie arrived a few steps ahead of the pathologist. She must have left home as swiftly as he had, but her motorcycle leathers concealed the evidence. She looked wide awake. He supposed that riding a big Suzuki V-Strom 650cc bike in the cold of the early morning would probably do that.

  ‘Is it her?’ she breathed.

  He shrugged. ‘Take a look for yourself. I’m not sure.’ He turned to Wilkinson and nodded a greeting. ‘Glad you’re the one to turn out this morning, Rory. By the look of it, I’m really going to need your help and expertise.’

  ‘Oh, but you always need my help, Inspector. And you might be happy that I’m freezing my bollocks off on the edge of the North Sea at five in the morning, but I’m not so sure. My fluffy duvet is still calling out to me.’

  Rory stepped towards the dead girl and dropped the act immediately. ‘The jungle drums tell me that she may belong to one of our people?’

  Jackman noticed the softness to his tone. ‘It could be. We have been looking for a runaway for the last three days. Shauna Kelly, fourteen-year-old daughter of Liz Kelly, a civilian who works in the control room.’

  ‘The age is probably similar,’ murmured the pathologist, kneeling down and gently inspecting his new charge. ‘But I’ll have to get her back to the morgue before I can tell you anything constructive.’ He stood up and pushed his wire-rimmed glasses further up onto the bridge of his nose.

  ‘And I’m afraid I have to warn you that it is not easy with these particular cases. Sometimes it’s almost impossible to determine the manner of death from a post-mortem. Maybe the lungs and the sinuses will turn up something, but our best bet will be a complete toxicological analysis. So don’t rush me, okay? I promise to do my best and I’m fully aware it’s high priority.’ He beckoned to a SOCO who was waiting tentatively near the dunes.

  ‘Time to shine, my friend. I want photographs and a very careful examination.’ He turned back to Jackman. ‘We’ll get her shipped out ASAP. It’s the best I can do. And I hate to say this, but right now I know little more than you. The poor kid is dead, and it didn’t happen in the last few hours. She’s been in the water for quite a while.’ He drew in a whistling breath and stared hard at Jackman. ‘Sorry, but I’m passing the buck back to you, DI Jackman. You need to discover the circumstances behind this girl’s death, and then we’ll try to tie it in with my findings.’

  ‘I need to know who she is before I can do that,’ said Jackman grimly.

  ‘Well, there are two simple ways that you can either confirm or eliminate Shauna Kelly. Bring in the next of kin to identify her, or failing that, wait for the dental records report.’ He gave them a rather sad smile. ‘And I’m pretty sure which of the two options you guys will go for.’ He picked up his bag.

  ‘And now, as I have no wish to hear what I’m sure will be a simply divine dawn chorus, I’m going to get back and make arrangements for this poor girl.’

  Jackman and Marie watched him stride back up the beach.

  ‘What they call an acquired taste, I believe.’ Marie grinned.

  ‘I’ve acquired it already. He’s good. In fact, he’s one of the best I’ve come across.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  They walked to a quiet spot further up the beach, a little way away from the blue lights and the gathering uniforms. Jackman sat on a low stone wall that edged the dunes.

  ‘What do you know about the tides along this stretch, Marie?’ Jackman asked.

  She sucked on her bottom lip. ‘Not much, but I know a man who does. Jack Archer, a real web-foot if ever there was one. He lived way out on the marsh for most of his life. His dad and granddad were eel-catchers. Now he’s in an old people’s place just outside your village. Social Services moved him off the marsh when he took ill and there was no one to look after him. He knows these fens better than anyone.’

  ‘Go see him, Marie. Tell him the exact spot where the girl washed up, and ask him if he could give us an idea of what part of the coast she went in from. If he knows the area that well, he might be able to help us.’

  ‘Okay. He’s in his eighties, but I reckon he’ll still be an early riser. I’ll grab a shower, then go round and see him as soon as it’s properly light.’

  Jackman took in the sight of the liquid gold sun breaking through the grey marbled sky and reflecting across the quicksilver waters of the Wash. ‘Look at that,’ he said softly. ‘This place is something else, isn’t it? If it weren’t for that poor kid lying on the beach, it would be magical.’

  ‘It’s still magical,’ said Marie softly. ‘And let’s consider it a blessing that we have her back from the deep, whoever she is.’

  Jackman took one last glance back to the beach and was glad to see that the girl was no longer visible. A group of police and scene-of-crime officers were working around her now. Soon she would be lifted up from the cold, wet sand and taken back to Rory’s mortuary, where hopefully she would see fit to give up her secrets to the one man who was able to hear.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jackman was up to his neck in reports when Marie got back from seeing Jack Archer. ‘Waste of time?’ he queried, noting her unusually serious expression.

  ‘No, far from it. He’s a great old guy. Really helpful.’ Marie placed two coffees on his desk, and pushed the office door closed.

  ‘So why the mardy face?’

  ‘Oh nothing, sir. It’s just the thought of that lovely young girl dying in that manner.’

  Jackman closed the file that he was working on and pointed to a chair. ‘Sit.’ He helped himself to one of the coffees and a handful of sugar sachets. As he tore open the tiny packets and shook them into his drink, he looked at her thoughtfully. Marie was a handsome woman. She was tall with long, rich brunette hair and an upright stance that still turned heads at forty-six years old. She had an Amazonian quality that she used to full advantage with both villains and coppers alike. The consensus of opinion in the mess room was “Don’t mess with Super Mario!” Jackman knew a different side of Marie, compassionate and gentle, but very, very astute. He trusted her opinions and her judgements. Their upbringing and backgrounds could not be more different, but they shared a d
eep love for their chosen career, and although they reached their conclusions by different paths, they usually agreed in the end.

  ‘Why has this one hit you so hard, my friend? You’ve seen more than your fair share of deaths.’

  Marie shrugged. ‘My very first case was a drowning. Another youngster, not much different to the lass this morning. We never managed to identify her.’ She pushed her hair back over her shoulder and reached for her coffee. ‘I always felt we let her and her family down. We never traced them and no one came forward, but she must have a family somewhere. It seemed so awful that she was never taken home to rest.’

  ‘We can’t help them all, Marie. We do our best, but sometimes the odds are stacked against us.’

  ‘Do you think that girl was Shauna Kelly?’

  ‘My gut feeling says yes. But I don’t want to go down that route until we get those dental records back.’

  Marie nodded and sipped her coffee. ‘No matter who she is, we have to find out exactly what happened to her, and if it was no accident . . .’ She left the sentence unfinished.

  ‘Oh yes. But tell me what your ancient local had to say about those tides.’

  Marie placed a dog-eared map of the coastline on his desk and smoothed it out. ‘Jack Archer thinks that the girl went into the water around this area here.’ She tapped the map. ‘Allenby Creek. The tides, the currents and the recent light winds all make this the most likely spot, unless she fell from a boat. We just have to hope that isn’t the case.’

  ‘Allenby Creek? That’s a remote spot, isn’t it?’

  Marie stared at the map. ‘It’s on the borders of our patch and Harlan Marsh. And yes, that area is all farmland and wild salt-marsh.’

  ‘Come to think of it, I remember it from when I was a kid. There used to be one accessible beach there. It was close to the old seal sanctuary at Hurn Point.’