Fatal Promise: A totally gripping and heart-stopping serial-killer thriller Read online

  Fatal Promise

  A totally gripping and heart-stopping serial-killer thriller

  Angela Marsons

  Also by Angela Marsons

  Detective Kim Stone Series

  1. SILENT SCREAM

  2. EVIL GAMES

  3. LOST GIRLS

  4. PLAY DEAD

  5. BLOOD LINES

  6. DEAD SOULS

  7. BROKEN BONES

  8. DYING TRUTH

  9. FATAL PROMISE

  * * *

  Other Books

  1. DEAR MOTHER

  2. THE FORGOTTEN WOMAN

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Chapter 102

  Chapter 103

  Chapter 104

  Chapter 105

  Chapter 106

  Chapter 107

  Chapter 108

  Chapter 109

  Chapter 110

  Chapter 111

  Chapter 112

  Chapter 113

  Epilogue

  Angela’s Email Sign-Up

  Also by Angela Marsons

  A Letter from Angela

  SILENT SCREAM

  EVIL GAMES

  LOST GIRLS

  PLAY DEAD

  BLOOD LINES

  DEAD SOULS

  BROKEN BONES

  DYING TRUTH

  DEAR MOTHER

  THE FORGOTTEN WOMAN

  Acknowledgements

  This book is dedicated to Keshini Naidoo without whom Kim Stone and her adventures would live only in my head.

  My fairy godmother, always.

  Prologue

  The late April sunshine bounces off the bluey black denseness of the hearse that is too vast to hold the coffin despite the array of mockingly bright blooms swamping it.

  A coffin that is sickeningly small. Pure white with brass hinges, carried on the shoulders of four family friends, when in truth it could be carried by fewer. One strong pair of arms would do.

  Tears stream down their faces; four burly men who try to outdrink each other every Friday night. Four men’s men that burp and fart and congratulate each other.

  But now they weep and make no effort to hide it. It’s acceptable. They will not be judged.

  The church is deathly silent as they reverently traverse the aisle to the top of the space. Despite their tears, grief, and sadness there is great concentration. The coffin is small and light, no match for the combined strength of mates who met on the rugby pitch. But who would want to trip, stumble over the raised edge of a carpet, or entangle their foot in the strap of a handbag spilling carelessly out of the aisle?

  Who would want to drop the coffin? Who would want that as their claim to fame? Who would want to be the subject of that drunken Friday night anecdote?

  And as I well know, the tighter you try to hang on to something, the more you focus on it, the easier it can slip from your grasp.

  Every gaze follows the small white box as it passes by. There is something repulsive about such a tiny burial coffin. But what repulses also fascinates, I realise as I watch people crane their necks from the far sides of the church. People want to see the incongruous oddity. The macabre short journey of life and death.

  A strangled sob sounds somewhere behind me, but most people’s horror has rendered them mute.

  The sorrowful glances slide from the coffin to me.

  I don’t react to their stares or the sympathetic expressions, held too long in case I glance their way and they can show me how deeply they mourn. I don’t wish to share their grief and I’m not willing to share mine.

  Mine has become useful. It is a living breathing entity that has changed in shape, size, and colour. It no longer weighs me down like a burden, it feeds me. It is like the air that I breathe. It enters my body as oxygen, something pure, something good. But then it transforms and expels as something different, poisonous.

  Eventually, the crowd follows morosely on the short walk to the corner of the cemetery that is filled with colour, flags, cuddly toys, angels and cherubs.

  Mourners are speaking in hushed tones behind me. I know that they cling to each other for support. Arms entwined as they make slow respectful steps.

  The minister appears at the grave, a hole more suited for a decent-sized tree. Not a life. A plant, a bush, but not a life.

  He reads from the bible as the coffin is lowered.

  The sobs behind me turn to grief-stricken howls, shrieks that could not be contained inside now set free to disperse amongst the trees.

  And it is done.

  The coffin is in the ground.

  Hands land all over my back, reassuring, comforting. Some brief, some linger.

  Everyone wants to offer something, some indication, a token of their grief. They want me to know. They want me to share. They offer it as a gift of their own humanity.

  And
I don’t give a fuck.

  My comfort doesn’t come from them.

  Neither does it come from the knowledge of eternal peace.

  It doesn’t come from the platitudes and clichés, the well-wishers, cards, flowers or the phone calls. It doesn’t come from the short time we had together.

  It comes from the rage. It comes from the white, hot anger that burns in every pore of my body, every atom of my being.

  My comfort comes from the plan.

  My comfort comes from the knowledge.

  The knowledge that everyone responsible will die.

  One

  Kim breathed a sigh of relief as the nurse completed the cut of the fibreglass cast with a cast saw. All five toes appeared to be intact.

  Finally, she could feel fresh, clean air circulating around the mummified skin.

  She groaned out loud with pleasure as she reached down and scratched a spot halfway down her shin. A taunting itch that had been driving her mad for six long weeks.

  ‘Feel good?’ asked the nurse, smiling.

  ‘Hell, yeah,’ Kim said, raking the area so hard it was reddening beneath her nails.

  And yet, after six weeks of torture the scratching of her flesh was not producing the level of satisfaction of which she’d dreamed. There had been nights she’d been tempted to use her own circular saw to release her limb for a scratch but she’d resisted, anticipating the pleasure of this moment. It was over all too soon.

  The nurse passed her a wet wipe which she gratefully wiped all over the flesh indented from the cast.

  The nurse threw the cast to the side as Kim moved her right leg to the edge of the bed. After six weeks of additional weight attached to it she had the sensation that her left leg was going to rise up and float away.

  A steadying hand rested on her thigh. ‘Not so fast, Inspector,’ said the nurse with a knowing look. ‘Doctor Shah will be with you in a minute. The cast is off but you’re not out of the woods yet.’

  She finished with a soft tap as though speaking to a child.

  ‘Yeah, and I’ve got places to—’

  ‘Aah, Miz Stone,’ said Doctor Shah. ‘I see you are your usual patient self this afternoon.’

  ‘Doc, I just want to get back—’

  ‘It is frustrating when the body is not so easily commanded by the will of the mind, no?’

  Kim narrowed her eyes at his light breezy tone.

  Doctor Shah peered at her over his glasses, as he had done the day she’d been wheeled in following the death of her colleague.

  His calm, soft voice had punctured her rage as she’d fought to get off the hospital bed and flee. She’d had no idea where she wanted to go. All she’d known was that her colleague lay broken at the bottom of a bell tower and she’d been forcibly removed from the scene.

  She shook herself back to the present, as Doctor Shah placed a hand on each ankle, as though gently holding her in place while he spoke.

  ‘Lift,’ he said, tapping her left ankle and then hovering his hand in mid-air.

  There was a delay of a few seconds as her brain sent the instruction to muscles that had lain dormant for weeks.

  The leg lifted and touched the outstretched hand. It faltered in mid-air before her upper thigh muscle controlled the descent back to the bed.

  ‘To the left,’ he instructed.

  ‘And to the right,’ he said.

  ‘There will be muscle weakness and this should be built up slowly. The leg is not normal yet,’ he said, again peering over his glasses.

  And didn’t she know it? Her milky white flesh bore the marks of the plaster imprinted into her skin. A two-inch scar ran down her shin where the fractured bone had forced itself through.

  ‘The X-rays show that the bones have healed well, however…’ he said, pausing.

  Nothing good ever came from however, Kim thought.

  ‘You still need to be careful. There will be pain and the leg muscles will be weak from inactivity. I’d like you to come to physiotherapy three mornings—’

  ‘Doc, you know what I’m going to ask?’ she said, cutting him off.

  ‘You need to understand that your leg needs time and gentle exercise to repair properly. The mending of the bones is only the first step—’

  ‘Doctor Shah,’ she pushed.

  He sighed dramatically in the face of her impatience.

  He nodded towards the crutches she’d leaned against the paper towel dispenser to the right of the door.

  ‘I’d like you to continue using them until you’ve completed a couple of physio sessions.’

  ‘Doc,’ she pushed again.

  ‘Providing you stick to light duties, preferably behind a desk, then I see no reason for you not to return to work.’

  Kim swung her right leg to the edge of the bed and shimmied her left one along using her hip and buttock muscles.

  ‘So, I’m officially signed off, right?’

  He nodded gingerly as though he felt it was a decision one of them might live to regret.

  Kim lowered herself and held up a hand when both Doctor Shah and the nurse moved forward to assist.

  She placed her right leg down then followed with her left.

  A jolt of pain shot from her shin bone right into her hip.

  She stumbled.

  The doctor reached to stabilise her but she shook her head and hung onto the bed.

  She did it again trying to ignore the sensation of weightlessness that made her think her leg was going to levitate of its own accord like a stage show magic trick.

  She understood that her leg had spent six weeks encased in safety and the feeling of instability now unnerved her.

  She focussed hard and took another step forward.

  Still pain but not as blinding and this time she was expecting it. She ignored the sweat beads forming on her forehead as she took another step.

  Doctor Shah had stepped back and was watching her movement.

  She took another step. Towards the door.

  ‘Don’t rush your recovery,’ he said, as she took another step.

  Her hand was on the door handle as she thanked him.

  His kind eyes acknowledged her words as she stepped out into the corridor. She closed the door, leaving the crutches firmly behind her.

  She moved slowly along the hospital corridor. She had forgotten how far she was from the main entrance. She had entered the hospital with two additional legs and six weeks’ experience in using them.

  Ten steps she counted as she reached a set of lifts. Each time she placed her foot down it felt a little more natural, like a distant memory returning, but the effort had brought on a wave of nausea.

  She took a second to rest against the wall, frustrated that her muscles were still waking up.

  ‘May I help you, miss?’ asked a red tee-shirted volunteer. His name plate announced him as Terry.

  She shook her head as he opened a door to the right of where she stood.

  ‘There’s a chair,’ he said, pointing inside to the small space. ‘Just take a minute,’ he said. ‘You look like you’re about to pass out.’

  ‘Thank you but I’m fine,’ Kim said, moving away from his kindness and towards the hospital main entrance.

  As she neared the automatic doors she spotted the taxi she’d instructed to wait.

  She couldn’t reach it fast enough.

  It was time to return to work and her team. And although her team would never be the same again, she’d been away from them for long enough.

  Two

  Doctor Gordon Cordell pulled up in front of the apartment block and marvelled at the speed of his change in fortunes.

  There was nothing about his life that hadn’t altered in the six weeks since the investigation into the death of Sadie Winters at his old school, Heathcrest Academy. Every aspect of the elite facility for the privileged and wealthy children of the Black Country had been investigated. That same investigation had uncovered the fact he’d performed an illegal abortion on Sadie’
s sixteen-year-old sister.

  Not that he’d had a choice. When presented to him by her father, at least three weeks over the twenty-four-week legal limit, he had foregone the mandatory agreement of another doctor to satisfy the Abortion Act requirements and performed the termination anyway.

  Thank God he had kept no records of the procedure and what was left of the Winters family weren’t shouting about it from the rooftops.

  But that bitch detective and her team from West Midlands Police had tried their hardest to bring charges against him. And had failed.