Nails In A Coffin (Demi Reynolds Book 1) (19 page)

DCI Francis walked into the barn first. She got tired of waiting and pushed past the farmer and Lionel. She wasn’t in the mood to be patient. All she wanted to do was examine the scene and track Demi down.

As she walked into the barn, the musty smell of gunpowder and damp mixed in the air. It made her cough a few times. She looked up and saw the ceiling of the barn ascend and curve on both sides. Long beams of wood on either side were littering the air with dust. The old, brittle lumber was polluting the air. Amy covered her mouth and scanned her immediate area. She saw two wooden support beams in front of her. Each of them was spaced out a few meters. They were both riddled with bullet holes. She was just about to get a closer look at the beams when she heard her foot step into something squelchy. She looked down and saw a pool of blood. A man lay on the ground, right in the entrance to the barn. She hadn’t clocked him before. She was too preoccupied with whatever was shedding off the beams above her head.

“Second body,” she heard someone say from behind her.

Amy turned around and saw her partner’s face come out of the shadows, followed by his body.

“What?” she asked.

“That’s the second body. We nearly missed the other. It’s outside, lying in the long grass next to that clapped-out banger. Must have taken a shot to the head, seeing his skull is split in two.”

She nodded at Lionel and pointed at the body near her feet. “Looks like the same story with this guy,” she said.

“Whoever killed these men seemed to be pretty handy with a heater.”

“I concur,” another voice said.

They both turned around and saw the farmer standing by the barn doors. He was gazing in expectantly. Amy gave him a look, and he tipped his hat and walked away. He walked around the barn and leant on its side. He tilted his hat and shaded his eyes from the morning sun. The farmer waited there until they were done.

“I hate that guy,” Amy said once he was out of earshot.

“He doesn’t seem too bad. It could be worse,” Lionel offered.

“How?” Amy asked.

“He could be you!”

Amy shoved her partner playfully and turned back around. She stepped over the body in the entrance. The sound of the soil below her turned from squelchy to dusty within a few paces. It then returned to squelchy once again. She looked down and saw another pool of blood. A big one this time. It was near the first support beam. She noticed the beam was peppered with holes. Looked like shotgun shells had been let off in the barn.

“Red buckshot case,” Lionel said from behind her. She turned around and saw him picking up a shell casing with the nib of a pen. He held it up for her to see and then bagged and tagged it. She turned back around and thought about making her way around the support beam that had been peppered by shotgun shells. Amy pondered for a while but then decided to put a brave face on. She wasn’t good with dead bodies. But for some reason, she’d decided to become a homicide detective. She’d thought it would curb her problem with the dead, but in actual fact, it made it worse. Besides, she couldn’t do anything about it now. It was done. She was a detective and had to deal with the dead. So that’s what she was doing. Dealing with the dead.

“You okay?” she heard Lionel ask from behind her. She ignored him and made her way around the severely shot-up timber support beam. As she did so, she heard the squelching under her feet intensify. She cleared the beam at a forty-five-degree angle and was met by the source of the massive pool of blood.

“Two dead bodies. One gut shot and the other a head shot. The gut-shot guy is a big guy. Somehow, he doesn’t seem to fit the same dress style as the other three dead men in the barn,” Amy offered as she knelt down and examined the big guy behind the pillar. Lionel did the same, but he examined the man next to the big guy. They were spaced apart, so Amy knew that they had been killed separately. Judging by the angle, the dead body in the entrance was responsible for one of those two men’s deaths, if not both.

“I count three sets of footprints,” Lionel said, examining the ground. “Two similar treads, belonging to classic-style shoes,” he said, pointing at the feet of his assigned body and acknowledging the same style of shoes on Amy’s, “and some trainers, judging by the circular patterns on the soles, which are usually found on running shoes, maybe Nikes.”

“How can you be so sure?” Amy asked.

“I can’t. Just a hunch. If a detective isn’t allowed a hunch, then who is?”

Amy smiled and said, “Judging by the lack of running shoe–inspired footwear on our dead bodies in here, we are missing a fifth party, so to speak.”

“Make that sixth,” Lionel said, standing up and gazing at something.

“What, you think there were two gunmen?” Amy asked.

“Nope, just a fifth dead body,” he said, pointing behind her. She turned her head and squinted her eyes. In the far corner was a shadowy figure. She quickly got to her feet and cautiously made her way over to the figure. As she got closer, the light began to illuminate whatever was lurking in the shadows, and to her dismay, she recognized the corpse that sat upright, leaning against some haystacks.

“Lionel, quickly!” she said.

He rushed over to her and stood at her side, evaluating what was in front of them.

“Good God, it’s Donny the Hat himself!” he said.

“I know! This is big news. It’s gonna twist the Met right up. They wanted to build a damn case against the guy and now he’s dead. Serves them right — maybe they should have taken the alleged kidnapping we suspected of him seriously.”

“Yeah, and maybe the kidnapper wouldn’t have turned into a stiff,” Lionel said. He noticed something on the floor. It was glowing ever so slightly. He reached for it with his latex-gloved hand and grabbed it.

“A mobile,” he said, the small LCD screen coming to life with a bright light that seemed to illuminate the whole barn. Amy caught herself looking deeply into Donny the Hat’s eyes as the light shone. She wanted to make sure he was dead, and, sure enough, he was. He had sustained a massive amount of trauma to his stomach and chest.

“Anything on the phone?” Amy asked, feeling a little lightheaded.

“Yeah, everything.”

Amy turned her head slightly and said, “Everything?”

Lionel nodded at her and said, “Looks like your theory was right.”

“My theory?”

He turned the mobile phone around and stuck it in her face. Her eyes tried to focus on the tiny screen, but as they did, her jaw nearly dropped to the ground. There was a text on the screen. It read:

The bitch got out of the coffin. I’m hurt. Come down to Ashford. Use the tracker on my phone. When you get here, kill Demi Reynolds.

“Doesn’t get much more concrete than that,” Amy said.

“Nope. It’s as clear as day. Looks like Demi returned the message to sender. We’ve got five guys dead in a barn. Another two dead up the road near a coffin that’s missing a corpse. Either the dead are coming back to life and seeking revenge, or she wasn’t dead enough and decided to put them in the ground instead.”

Amy nodded and stared into the eyes of Donny the Hat as he sat there peacefully.

“We now know one thing, though,” Amy said.

“What’s that?”

She paused and smiled. “Our girl’s a fighter.”

After a day’s rest:

Nine hours later.

Demi had been resting in a hotel room. It was nothing special. Small and cramped, if not a little dank. But it was her safe haven now. A safe haven that would soon turn into her last port of call in the country. She was planning on leaving the British Isles and heading for Spain. She’d go to Barcelona and spend a few weeks there. Then she’d cross the country and head to the west of Iberia, toward Portugal. She was planning on visiting an acquaintance. He went by the name of El Portista. It was a name that only meant something in Portugal. Loosely translated, it meant that he was a supporter of the local football team, FC Porto. They’d won a few European titles, so it was a fair team to support.

But she wasn’t planning on meeting El Portista for social reasons. As much as Demi enjoyed watching a game of football, she wasn’t able to partake in such a thing. She had bigger things on her mind to worry about. Like making it out of the United Kingdom. Reaching Spain and settling there for a while. Getting her affairs straightened out. Then making her way to Portugal to meet up with her only friend in the world.

It went in that order. Escape. Spain. Portugal.

She didn’t know what else was planned after that. She wasn’t that far into the escape plan, let alone what she thought she’d do after her rendezvous with El Portista.

“I need to go,” she said out loud. She was sitting on the end of her bed. It was nine o’clock in the evening. The last ferry to Spain was an hour away. She was not far from Ramsgate. She could get there in twenty minutes. The hotel she was staying in was one of those Premier Inns that the Vicar of Dibley’s ex-husband advertised on the telly. It was nice and clean, like the advert suggested. The only thing missing was a dark-skinned handsome man, but she knew that was a long shot.

She noticed as she got to her feet that her sense of humor was returning. As much as she didn’t like the idea of being on the run, the thought of her shacking up with Lenny Henry was enough to make her realize that it wasn’t all lost.

Sure, some people had lost their lives in the past three to four days. She couldn’t hold herself to blame. She felt sour about Hamish dying. That would never change. But he went out a hero, and that was comfort enough for Demi. She knew that, in a sense, it would be what he wanted. After all, he had spent many years being on the receiving end of Donny the Hat. And that would make anybody angry. Angry enough to kill. Angry enough to get his own back. And he sure did. He got Donny back. He foiled his plan. He rescued the damsel in distress, and he would have gotten the girl, if only he’d lived long enough.

A tear ran down her cheek. She was sad that she’d never gotten to show Hamish how much he meant to her. She cursed herself for being so shallow at times. She only ever dated good-looking men. Men who turned heads. Men who wore fancy suits and drove nice cars.

Men like Nathan Richards. And that turned out just fine. Because of her shallowness, she had been locked away, beaten, and buried alive, all because of her taste in men. She decided that from that moment forward, she’d be staying away from men.

“I could kiss a girl,” she said to herself, looking into the mirror and seeing a rested and washed face stare back at her. She looked pretty for the first time in two weeks. Sleeping in your filth while locked in a dark room will make you look ten years older.

The thought of staying away from men and becoming a full-fledged lesbian shifted out of her mind. She knew she was only trying to cover up her true feelings, and those feelings were guilt. She felt guilty about the whole thing. Like she was the only one walking away free from this ordeal. She decided right then and there that she wouldn’t think of Donny the Hat anymore, or even Hamish. They were now distant memories. She would create new ones. Ones that involved sunshine and adventure. Nights on the beach. Sardines on the riverside. Peacefulness on the Iberian coast.

She was ready to leave her life of crime behind her. She didn’t want anything to do with it. Now all she wanted was to get out of there. So she reached for her only possessions in the world. A slipcase with her documents in them. She planned to buy a rucksack at some point. She had all her money in her pockets. Ten thousand pounds. It was a good job she was wearing baggy combat trousers. They had plenty of room for wads of cash. They wouldn’t check her at a ferry port anyway. She’d walk through a metal detector. It wouldn’t sound off, so they wouldn’t check her.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, looking at herself in the mirror once again. She sighed and made her way out of the hotel room. She had left all the lights on. She didn’t really care. She wasn’t the one paying for the electric. Her mind was elsewhere. Turning off the lights was the least of her worries.

Demi walked down the stairs and past the reception. It was one of those places where you paid when you checked in. As she walked by, she nodded at the receptionist. The receptionist nodded back. They exchanged smiles, and she walked through the sliding double doors.

She got into the 4x4. It was parked in the nearest parking spot to the entrance of the inn. She fired up the engine, and, without thinking twice, she reversed and sped off.

She had a ferry to catch.

After twenty minutes on the road, she reached the port. Ramsgate was a beautiful place. It looked like a Caribbean port, and the horizon was filled with fishing trawlers and yachts. They hovered around the area like buzzards around a corpse. She watched as the yachts bobbed in the water, and she pulled up to a thirty, to forty-car-long line. As she waited in line for the cars to disappear down the ramp into the ferry, the nighttime stars twinkled above her. She thought about her life in England and how it had panned out. She thought about the many men she had killed for money, and how Donny the Hat had hired her for nearly every kill.

Her fists began to tense up as she thought about all the men she had dispatched. Then a light bulb went off in her head. She realized why she felt the way she did. She finally knew why she wanted Donny the Hat dead. It wasn’t because of what he’d done to her. Locking her up in a dark room. Making her sleep in her own feces. It wasn’t because of what he threatened to do to her. It had nothing to do with the fact that he’d tried to bury her alive.

It was to do with what he made her do for a living. All the people she’d killed. All the lives she’d taken. And for what? Money? A lot of good that did her. She was an empty shell. A person with no soul. And she wanted to get it back. She wanted to experience what it was like to kiss a man for love. To hug a child. To embrace a good friend. To enjoy their company.

She vowed, from then on, that was all she would be doing. She would no longer take another person’s life. Not if she could help it. She wanted to be a peaceful person. To enjoy her life. To enjoy something, - anything.

The sound of a car’s horn sounding off from behind her pulled her out of her daze. She noticed that the line of cars in front of her had disappeared, and it was now her turn to drive into the ferry. She slowly approached the ramp and drove in. A man stuck his arm out, and she stopped. He walked up to her and asked her to roll down the window. She did as he asked.

“Hello,” he said, sounding quite chipper. He was a large man in his mid-fifties. He had flushed red cheeks and looked like he’d just eaten dinner, because half of it was flecked on his high-viz jacket.

“Hi,” Demi replied.

“Passport?”

“Sure,” she said, handing it over to him.

He paused for a second, looked at her, and then back at the passport. He then smiled, handing it back to her. She handed him thirty-two pounds fifty for the fare.

“Single?” he asked.

“Yeah, no return,” she said.

He nodded and printed off her receipt. It came out of what looked like a chip and pin card reader. He handed her the ticket and nodded her through. She drove into the darkness and came to a stop before a row of cars. A few people were already out and about, hanging off the railings that surrounded the ship. They were looking at the waves as they crashed against the ship’s stern.

She sat in her car for a long while. She breathed a sigh of relief as she heard the foghorn go off and the ship began to move. She didn’t get out of the car until England was nothing but a minuscule dot in her rearview mirror.

“Free,” she said, opening the door to her car and breathing in the fresh air.