TRICK OF THE NIGHT a gripping crime thriller with a huge twist (Detective Matt Ballard Mystery Book 5) Read online

  TRICK

  OF THE

  NIGHT

  A gripping crime thriller with a huge twist

  JOY ELLIS

  Matt Ballard Book 5

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2022

  © Joy Ellis 2022

  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. The right of Joy Ellis to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  ISBN: 978-1-80405-330-0

  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

  ALSO BY JOY ELLIS

  THE DI NIKKI GALENA BOOKS

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  GLOSSARY OF ENGLISH USAGE FOR US READERS

  Dedicated to readers everywhere, plain and simple.

  Thank you to everyone who loves books. To everyone who encourages others to read, especially to those who pass their love of books on to children.

  And to my own readers, who mean so much, the biggest thank you of all. This one is for you.

  CHAPTER ONE

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  Toby Unsworth was feeling pretty pleased with himself. Another couple of weeks and he would be embarking on the final year of his photography course at university. He had been given a coursework assignment to complete during the holidays. It was voluntary, but he knew that it all counted towards his final mark in the module, so he’d pulled out all the stops. Toby wanted nothing less than to excel. His tutor had indicated that he was heading for the highest grade and he was already building a mega-impressive portfolio — these new low-light photographs were some of the best he’d ever taken. Night photography was his real love, and when he looked at the images he’d recently captured, he knew exactly which direction he wanted to take when he headed out into the real world.

  There was just one picture that he needed in order to complete the assignment, and so far, he’d never quite managed to bring together all the factors he needed for that perfect shot. Tonight, however, checking the weather for the tenth time, he was fairly sure he stood a chance of capturing the image he had been dreaming of.

  Toby had been to this part of town so many times he thought he probably knew every crack in the pavement, every cobble of this narrow street in the oldest part of Fenfleet. He’d been here four nights in a row now, had taken some great shots, but that elusive “special” one still remained to be captured. He knew the exact spot to set up his tripod, and he even had a couple of chocolate bars in his pocket, prepared to spend hours until the conditions were perfect.

  The narrow, cobbled alley widened into a tiny church square which was a veritable time warp. The iron lamps attached to the ancient walls of the buildings and the old-fashioned lamp post in the centre of the square glowed like gas lamps. The church was just visible, nestling in the shadows, and a full moon was slowly making its way across the sky to a point immediately above the church tower. The cobbles gleamed wetly and the few lamps cast pools of glimmering light on the uneven ground. Along with the peeling paintwork on the dark doorways recessed into the crumbling brickwork, and the occasional grimy window, the scene could have come straight out of a novel by Dickens.

  Toby spent time taking a series of test shots, checking light and exposure, looking at the scene from different angles. He had it in his mind to make up a kind of collection of the old alley from various aspects, a present-day history of what remained decades after its heyday.

  He checked the position of the moon again, returned to his original spot and his tripod and waited. Gradually, tendrils of low mist began to creep through the empty alley from the direction of the river. A wave of excitement began to course through him. Oh, this couldn’t be better! As long as no one decided to take a shortcut through the alley and ruin the whole thing, he would get those pictures at last, and then he would ace his assignment for sure.

  He took shot after shot — if he took fifty or a hundred from which only two or three really pleased him, he didn’t care. This could be the image that changed the course of his life as an emerging artist.

  Several times he heard footsteps, once he heard muffled voices, even a car engine close by, but his luck held out. There were two little side streets that joined the alley and whoever was talking must have been in one of those as, luckily, they never appeared.

  Fifteen minutes later he had lost the moonlight, and the mist had dissipated as swiftly as it had come, but Toby was satisfied, sure he had that precious shot he so wanted. He couldn’t wait to get back to his room and upload it all onto his computer.

  He folded up his tripod and made his way back towards the main part of town and his car. It was a thirty-minute drive to where he lived on the outskirts of Greenborough, in a typical student house, and he had to keep reminding himself not to speed. He knew that Greenborough had some wonderful “old-town” locations of its own, but they had been worked to death by his fellow students and he had wanted something fresh and new. His parents had once lived in Fenfleet and he was brought up there, so he knew the back lanes would provide exactly what he needed.

  Toby’s room was on the third floor of an old house he shared with four others. It had a sloping ceiling and dormer windows set into the roof. His mother had called it cosy, his father poky. Whatever, he liked it. There was no one stomping around above him, and he picked up the best mobile phone signal in the house. Plus, the only other person on this floor was another photography student called Alex, who was a real swot, and quiet with it. Win-win, as far as Toby was concerned. He liked the occasional party night and went clubbing once or twice a month, but he really was at university to learn, not to piss his grant up the wall, or catch something embarrassing and unpleasant.

  Alex was climbing the stairs ahead of him, having just come out of the bathroom. ‘Find what you were looking for?’ he asked, casting an enquiring smile back over his shoulder. ‘Or did the conditions let you down again?’

  ‘I think I got it this time, Al.’ He couldn’t keep the excitement from his voice. ‘I really do.’

  ‘Can I see?’

  ‘Let me sift out the shit first, then I’ll show you what’s left.’ For some reason he wanted to be by himself when he looked at the images. If he’d really got something truly special, he wanted to relish that first sight alone.

  ‘Look, I’m bushed anyway, so I’ll come and check them out in the morning.’ Alex opened his door. ‘Hope they’re what you want, bud. Night.’

  Toby went into his own room, threw his equipment onto the bed, extracted his photo card from his camera, and went over to his laptop.

  It didn’t take long to upload the images, but it felt like forever to the anxious student. Soon he had a whole folder of pictures. Painstakingly, he examined every single shot. Some he deleted immediately, simply because the quality wasn’t there. Others he left for later, to decide on after he’d considered them all.

  Toby stared at the earlier images and was more than pleased. One, taken in a brighter light, threw deep shadows on the scene, and made some of the architecture look sharp and kind of stark. It had lost the creepy Victorian aspect and taken on an edgy and sinister darkness that he really liked.

  But this was not what he was looking for right now. Toby pressed on, then stopped, stared, and took a long slow inhalation of breath.

  The image on the screen was perfect! It was everything he had prayed he would achieve. The lighting was superb, the composition spot on. The mist had tempered it into a timelessly beautiful photograp
h. Hell, he couldn’t wait to show his tutor.

  Toby sat back in his chair and laughed out loud. Then he went to his tiny mini-fridge, a present from his dad, and took out a bottle of Carlsberg. He had earned it.

  He saved the folder and dated it. Sipping his lager, he went through some of those earlier photos again. There was one of an old dilapidated three-storey building that had probably stood unused for a decade or more. It seemed to lean precariously into the alley and gave the picture a slightly unreal, almost drunken appearance. There was another of a rusted padlock attached to a rotting doorframe that looked somehow threatening, as if it were daring the person who was looking at it to go in and see what nightmares might lie in the empty building.

  Toby took a long slug of the beer. This was awesome! He had done some good work before, but this was in a different league. He stared at the screen, then narrowed his eyes and leaned closer. He was looking at the old disused place again, and at one particular filthy window. Surely what he was looking at had to be a trick of the light?

  He placed the beer bottle on his desk and zoomed in on the window.

  He was looking at a face. Distorted, indistinct, but definitely a face. ‘It’s a woman,’ he breathed. ‘Or is it? But . . . ?’

  His euphoria faded, replaced by puzzlement, and then concern. What the hell was he looking at? He thought about that particular building. It had been shut up for as long as he could remember and to his knowledge, squatters had never even tried to get into the old wreck of a place.

  He scrolled back to the pictures he had taken over the last weeks. He’d photographed that place numerous times before. Maybe it was just some glitch, dirt on the windowpane that the glow from the wall light beneath had turned into a face. Things like that happened.

  He found a dozen other pictures that included that window, but not one had anything resembling a face in it. The more he looked, the more he decided there really had been someone there, in that horrible and probably dangerous place. But was it any of his business?

  Now he wished for Alex’s company. He was a down-to-earth, no-nonsense kind of a guy. His opinion would be worth listening to.

  Toby went and knocked on Alex’s door.

  ‘Fuck off! I’m sleeping,’ came the reply.

  ‘Alex! I need you to see something.’

  ‘I said tomorrow. Your masterpiece will keep. Some of us lesser mortals need rest, we’re not all as brilliant as you.’

  ‘No, really, this is nothing to do with the picture. I’ve seen something I don’t understand. Please. Alex?’ Toby waited, then heard grumbling and shuffling.

  ‘This’d better be good.’ Alex opened the door. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and was yawning loudly.

  Two minutes later, Alex stared at the image with him, and finally said, ‘It’s definitely a face, no question. So, what the fuck is someone doing in that dump?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ groaned Toby. ‘But what I want to know is what do I do about it? Ignore it? That’d drive me nuts. Tell the police? They won’t give a toss, will they? They’ll think it’s a student prank.’ He threw up his hands.

  ‘We could go and take a look.’ Alex was now wide awake.

  Toby had already considered that. ‘It’s a long way to go and then find there’s no way in. I remember that the front of that place is shut up tighter than a duck’s backside.’

  ‘Mmm, but we could check out a back entrance. If we find out it’s squatters or druggies, then that’s your answer. If not, well . . .’ He shrugged. ‘I must say I don’t like the feel of this.’

  Nor did Toby. That face was giving him the creeps. Possibly he was reading too much into it; it certainly wasn’t an imprisoned maiden waiting for a handsome young knight to rescue them, it was far darker than that. ‘Okay, grab some clothes, Al. I’ve got just enough petrol left in the tank to get us there and back, and hopefully see the week out. I’ll see you down by the car.’

  Grabbing his wallet and phone, he paused and stared at the image on his laptop. ‘Who are you?’ he whispered.

  No one answered. He saved the image, closed the program and shut the laptop down.

  It didn’t take long to get to Fenfleet. There was no traffic on the roads, nothing parked near the alley.

  ‘Here goes nothing,’ said Alex softly. ‘Show me this weird building and that window.’

  The two young men hunted for a back way into the deserted building, but like the ancient front door, it was locked, bolted and barred, and had obviously been that way for some time. They were just about to give up when Alex, using the torch on his phone, picked up a much smaller door. It was located behind a row of bins belonging to another less dilapidated property, set low in the back wall and down a couple of stone steps. On closer examination they could see that this door had been used, quite recently.

  ‘Look,’ whispered Toby. ‘There are scratches around the keyhole, as if someone was trying to unlock it in the dark.’

  ‘And the dirt and muck on the floor has been disturbed by the door swinging open,’ added Alex. ‘I don’t think this is a squat, do you?’

  Toby agreed. ‘No way. They don’t have keys. But one thing’s for sure, we aren’t going to get in through this,’ he indicated the door. ‘It’s well solid.’

  Alex turned off his torch. ‘So, what now? Do we give up? Or do we back off tonight and try and make some enquiries about this place? See if anyone uses it legitimately. You know, like the owner, because someone must own it, even if it is a dump. Let’s go round and watch that window for a bit.’

  Unaware that they were now moving silently, they went back out into the alley and took up a position close to where Toby had set up his camera equipment earlier. Nothing. No face, no light, nothing.

  ‘I still don’t think I imagined it,’ muttered Toby.

  ‘No, I saw that image. The thing is, is that person up there voluntarily, or not? And what the fuck is going on?’

  Toby shivered, and it wasn’t just the cold night air. ‘I think we’ll do as you suggested, Al. Let’s do a bit of digging. Maybe I’ll come back in the daylight tomorrow and ask around about the building and who owns it.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll come with you, and if we hit a blank, how about a stake-out after it gets dark? Watch what kind of people turn up and try and see what they use this place for.’ Alex sounded quite fired up, ready for an adventure.

  With one last glance up at the dark windowpane, they went back to Toby’s car.

  All the way back to the house, they hypothesised on possible reasons for seeing a mysterious woman in a deserted building at night, but had come to no conclusion by the time they arrived home.

  ‘See you in the morning. We’ll head back over there,’ said Alex, unlocking his door, ‘and if you’re stuck for fuel, I can lend you a tenner till next week.’

  ‘Thanks, Al, appreciated, but let’s see how we go. I might be okay.’

  Toby took out his door key, but when he slipped it into the lock, he found the door was already open. ‘Whoa! I locked that!’

  Halfway through his door, Alex stopped and strode back across the landing.

  Tentatively, Toby pushed the door open.

  The light was on and the curtains were pulled, something he never did, his stereo was playing softly . . . and his laptop was gone.

  ‘Oh, fuck!’ hissed Alex.

  Toby gasped. ‘Jesus! All my course work, all my images! Jesus! Jesus!’ Panic swept over him.

  ‘Steady, mate! You back it all up, remember? You told me. You never fail. It’s in the Cloud. You’ve lost nothing, just your device.’ Alex sounded so reasonable that Toby calmed down almost immediately. Then another thought struck him.

  ‘My dad is going to kill me. That laptop cost him an arm and a leg.’

  ‘I’ve got a spare you can borrow so you can retrieve your work,’ offered Alex. ‘I think we should phone the police, don’t you?’

  ‘Better see if anything else has gone,’ replied Toby miserably, wandering around the tiny room.

  After they’d checked the obvious things, Alex said, ‘Looks like the laptop was their only steal. At least there’s no damage to the place, so that’s a bonus, I suppose. I’ll go and ask downstairs if anyone heard anything — that lot never go to bed early, they’re probably rat-arsed, but I’ll ask anyway.’ He stopped at the door for a moment.