Deadly Secrets: An absolutely gripping crime thriller

  ‘Ma’am, you need to step back, or we will arrest you.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Obstructing a police officer with a warrant.’

  She moved to the banister and watched as the police fanned out and started searching through her house. She went to the phone, and with shaking hands, she dialled her son’s mobile phone.

  ‘Charles? The police are here!’ she shrilled, her voice climbing a register. ‘They say they’ve got a search warrant… They’re going through everything…’ She listened as her son fired questions at her, watching through the doorway to the front room where books were being taken down from the shelves, upended, shaken and dumped on the floor. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t got my reading glasses. They won’t tell me what they are doing. One of them manhandled me on the front doorstep… Okay, come quickly!’

  She put the phone down and tried to find a spot in the house where she could wait, but the police seemed to be everywhere. There seemed to be more than the six officers who had initially been on the front doorstep. She went back out to the freezing porch and sat on the small chair she used for putting on her shoes. Her hands were shaking, and it wasn’t just from the cold.

  An hour later, Charles Fryatt appeared through the glass outside the front door.

  ‘Why the hell did it take you so bloody long!’ she hissed when she opened the front door.

  ‘Where’s the warrant?’ Charles said. He took it from her, scanning the writing on the page and the signature. They moved into the hallway as Peterson was just coming down the stairs.

  ‘Are you Charles Fryatt?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. I think this is quite ridiculous, what could my mother have to do with the murder of Marissa?’ Charles said. ‘Look at her, she’s ninety-seven years old!’

  Peterson ignored him. ‘Is the front bedroom yours, Mrs Fryatt?’

  ‘Yes! You’ve been in there? You?’ she cried.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would expect a lady police officer to have been assigned to do that. No doubt you’ve had those hands all over my personal items!’

  Charles shot his mother a look. ‘Mum. You need to watch it,’ he warned.

  ‘I can say whatever the hell I like in my house. There’s freedom of speech for a reason!’

  ‘We need you to open the safe in the wardrobe,’ said Peterson. Charles looked at his mother; his eyes were wide and fearful.

  ‘I take it I don’t have a choice?’ she said.

  ‘No, you don’t. Either you open it, or we drill it open.’

  They followed him up two flights of stairs to the front bedroom, which held her huge four poster bed, a heavy wooden dressing table in front of the bay window, and a large fitted wardrobe lining one wall. The middle door was open, showing a heavy metal safe with a combination dial.

  ‘I’m the only person who knows the combination,’ said Mrs Fryatt imperiously.

  ‘What if you can’t remember it?’ asked Charles. There was something about the way he said this that suggested to Mrs Fryatt that her son was giving her some kind of cue to forget, but she tottered over to the safe and slowly knelt down.

  ‘I need you all to turn away,’ she said. Peterson, Charles and two of the uniformed officers also in the room looked away. There were some soft clicks and then the safe’s lock opened. Charles tried to catch his mother’s eye, but she refused to look at him. ‘There,’ she said.

  Peterson went to the safe, and crouched down to peer inside. There were three shelves. The first had a stack of twenty-pound notes and some old-fashioned bank bonds. The second was packed with velvet-lined jewellery boxes. The two uniformed officers joined him, and pulled on fresh latex gloves to take these out, placing them on the carpet. The first box was wide and flat and contained a dazzling diamond necklace; the second and third contained a Cartier diamond watch and two bracelets. Peterson sorted through the other boxes laid out on the carpet, which contained a diamond brooch, gold earrings, and another necklace with a six-ounce block of gold pendant. The final two boxes contained a pair of huge round-cut diamonds in gold, and the second a pair of square princess-cut diamonds.

  The bottom shelf of the safe was empty.

  ‘Do you own any other princess-cut diamonds?’ asked Peterson.

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Fryatt. ‘You will see underneath the bond certificates on the top shelf that I have all the insurance paperwork for my jewellery. It was made up at the end of last August. You will find everything there, present and correct.’

  Peterson spent several minutes checking through it all. Then he got up and went to Charles, who was watching from in front of the window. His grey skin glistened with sweat, despite the cool temperature.

  ‘Can you confirm that Marissa Lewis came to the jeweller where you work, with a pair of princess-cut diamond earrings, exactly the same as these?’ he asked, holding up the box.

  ‘Er. Yes… apparently, she did,’ Charles said. Mrs Fryatt stared at her son coldly.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell my colleagues this when they visited you before to talk about Marissa’s murder?’

  ‘Because I didn’t know she had been in to the shop, until one of your colleagues came in and spoke to my father-in-law. I’m one of four in the family who work there,’ said Charles. His eyes darting between Peterson and his mother’s steely gaze.

  ‘This is your wife’s family business?’

  ‘Yes, I work there along with two of her brothers.’

  ‘I need to take these earrings away for testing,’ said Peterson.

  ‘What do you propose you test for?’ asked Mrs Fryatt.

  ‘DNA.’

  ‘Well, you’ll find my DNA, and no doubt there might even be some from my daughter-in-law, who’s borrowed them on a couple of occasions. And of course, you’ll find Marissa’s DNA on them.’

  Peterson stared at her. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because I let her try them on, officer. If you care to wait, I could even dig out a picture of her wearing them. She did a photoshoot here for her burlesque portfolio. Her friend Sharon came and helped out.’ She held out her hand for the earrings.

  ‘I would still like to take these earrings for testing and analysis.’

  ‘Is that all you’d like to take? Do you want a blood or urine sample? Or perhaps you want to dust every surface for prints?’

  ‘Just the earrings,’ said Peterson, locking eyes with her, refusing to look away.

  ‘Fine. Test them, but you’re wasting your time, and I warn you, if there is any damage to them, however minor, I will sue you, and the police force. I have the money to do it.’

  * * *

  Peterson bagged up the earrings. He left the room, followed by the five officers. No one spoke until they came out onto the street to the waiting cars.

  ‘Shit,’ said Peterson, banging his fist on the bonnet. ‘Fuck!’

  Fifty-Nine

  Moss slowly regained consciousness, but everything was black. She could see nothing. She lay on her back, on a hard surface, and her head was throbbing. She breathed in. There was a strong goaty smell of body odour, and sour sweat. Strong feelings of nausea flooded over her; she thought she was going to throw up. Panic shot through her as she realised that her mouth was taped up. As she came fully awake, she felt that her hands were fastened tightly in front of her, bound at the wrists, and her ankles were bound too. She swallowed and tried to stay calm. She listened. There was a faint hiss, and then a whoomph and a tiny blue square appeared in the corner of her vision. It stayed on for a few seconds and then vanished.

  Moss swallowed again. Her throat was so dry and sticky. She slid from side to side, feeling around on the floor. She moved her bound arms to the right and felt a metal grille, and the same on the left. She shuffled up and down, feeling bars above her head and below her feet. Her heart began to beat again and panic rose in her. It threatened to overwhelm her. She was in some kind of cage.

  Keep calm, keep calm, calm, calm, came the voice in her head. S
he thought of the mindfulness techniques that Celia had started to do, to try and control her worry. She’d taken the piss out of Celia for carrying the mindfulness book around with her. Now she wished she’d read it. She tried to remember what it was about, what Celia had said. It was about concentrating on what was actually happening, and not letting your emotions get the better of you. She concentrated on the cold floor underneath her back. She felt around and was pretty sure it was wood.

  What was that blue light? It was a flame; the little flame behind the square hole in a central heating boiler. She had to see if she could sit up, and see what it illuminated, if it came back on again.

  Moss slowly breathed in and out. Her nose didn’t seem to pull in enough air. She started to sit up, but she had to stop halfway, because the blood beating through her veins seemed to push the pain up to her head, like it was going to explode. She felt nausea roll over her. If she threw up, she would choke.

  She slowly lay back down, and took deep breaths, tilting her head to put her cheek against the cold floor. She thought back to what had happened. She thought of the gas mask drawing, the moment when it had all fallen into place – and of course, he’d seen it too.

  Panic rose in her again. He was going to kill her. The flame was from a boiler, which probably meant she was in the basement. Tied up. Gagged. In a cage. Fear and hopelessness came over her again. Then Jacob’s face came into her mind. His beautiful eyes and his innocent smile. How good he smelt. How he loved to put his arms around her ever-expanding waist, and stand on her feet as she walked around the room, giving him a ride. And Celia, with her honey-blonde hair and her beautiful kind face. Why hadn’t she hugged them and told them she loved them before she’d left the house?

  Tears filled her eyes, and this gave her energy to fight. She took deep breaths and slowly inched herself up to a sitting position, trying to remember which side of her the blue flame had appeared. She put her head against the bars on the left, and inched herself up. The pain beat through her head, almost overwhelming her. She sucked in more air, deep breaths. He had taken off her jacket, and her hands were bound in front of her from above the wrist and forearm, down to her knuckles. She could feel it was duct tape, by the way it stuck to the fine hairs on her arms.

  Something clicked in a far corner on the right, and the blue flame appeared again. Her vision was blurred, but she managed to adjust her eyes and see the outline of a few shapes. The box shape of the boiler high up on the wall. There were several shapes between it and her, and she could see that the cage was on the floor. The flame went out and she was plunged into darkness again.

  She felt the nausea return and her back muscles started to cramp painfully, as well as the muscles in the back of her legs. Having her legs bound was bad enough, but the way her arms were bound in front of her, with her hands pointing forward, made it impossible to sit up straight. The cramp got worse and she winced in pain.

  Breathe, breathe, breathe. The pain will pass. She gave a muffled cry as the cramps became unbearable. Her shoulders were hunched over, her elbows locked together. She remembered a video she had seen online, some American self-defence dude who had explained what to do if your hands were bound with duct tape. This was another of Celia’s hobbies, going to self-defence classes. She’d wanted Moss to go with her, but it always seemed to clash with work. Celia had shown her this YouTube video… A guy had raised his bound arms above his head, and brought them down so that they hit his stomach, snapping them apart. It was something to do with the tensile strength of duct tape; if you try and pull it one way it just stretches like the strongest chewing gum, but if you use force on it another way it will break cleanly along the ridges.

  Moss took a deep breath and went to lift her arms up, but in the darkness, she misjudged the angle and her tightly bound wrists bashed her on the bridge of the nose. She gave a muffled sob, and then began to panic as her nose was flooded with blood. She bent forward, but her wrists were still tightly bound, and she couldn’t breathe. In the darkness, she started to choke on her own blood.

  Sixty

  T enjoyed the slow walk back through the houses. It gave him time to think. He thought of his life as light and dark. His work with the family portraits was so quaint and down to earth, that he thought of this as the light. Then when he closed the shop and he was alone, he would move through to the darkness.

  He had been introduced to the darkness by a girl he’d met fifteen years ago – no, that wasn’t quite right. The darkness had always been there, but Tabitha had teased it out of him, brought it to the fore. He had always thought he was the only person in the world who had violent fantasies, but Tabitha, a young, precocious student had encouraged him to experiment with sex toys and role play. She had encouraged him to tell her his secrets in the darkness.

  Tabitha loved being tied up, and they would act out a fantasy where he kidnapped and raped her. At the time, it had felt shocking and daring, but looking back now he knew it was kids’ stuff. Tabitha had been acting. It was only role play. And her acting wasn’t quite good enough. Her fear was wooden and hollow. She was a stepping stone to darker places.

  One night, they’d gone to an underground bondage club in Soho. This was where he’d discovered hoods, and breath control, and it also saw the end of his relationship with Tabitha. That night, he’d almost suffocated her. He’d seen real fear in her eyes and he hadn’t been able to stop. He’d managed to dissuade her from going to the police.

  Over the next few years, he’d indulged in visits to Amsterdam, where he would go to bondage clubs and buy extreme porn, but he’d quickly found that even the hardest type of porn wouldn’t satisfy him. Then he discovered gas masks, and in particular engaging in sex acts whilst wearing a gas mask, with the breathing drum closed for breath control, or packed with cotton wool soaked in amyl nitrate.

  He couldn’t quite remember when the idea came to him to stalk the streets late at night. He’d got high with a guy who he’d invited round to the sex dungeon he had built in his basement. They had somehow ended up in the garden, and then he’d staggered out through the back gate and into the street, where he’d crouched in a dark corner, watching people, hidden from view. The power it had given him was bigger than anything that had come before. He’d got bolder, at first exposing himself to men and women, and then, his first attack.

  T slowed as he approached Camera Obscura. He needed time to think. The fact it was a policewoman gave it an extra frisson. After all of the attacks over the years, he had never been caught. He had no police record, they didn’t have his DNA, and he had never even had a parking ticket or points on his licence.

  She was there in the basement. She had seen him. If he let her go, it would all be over.

  He was a risk-taker. He had already thrown them off the scent. He would have to think about how to dispose of her body. She was a big girl. He doubled back and decided to circle the block again. He needed to think and plan.

  Sixty-One

  Moss raised her arms in the darkness and brought them down, her wrists hitting her chest. She repeated it again. Her nose was pouring with blood and she was fighting to breathe. On the third attempt, her wrists snapped apart and her elbows slammed into the bars. She didn’t care about the pain and reached up with her numb fingers, ripping off the piece of duct tape covering her mouth. She gagged and spat and managed to pull huge gulps of air into her lungs.

  ‘Oh my god, oh my god!’ she cried, relieved by the sensation of being able to use her hands and breathe through her mouth. She started to work quickly, ripping and pulling at the tape around her ankles until they were free. She rolled her shoulders, and shifted around in the cage into a crouching position. She started to feel around inside the cage. Above her head were thick bars, and she couldn’t stand and straighten her legs. There was a padlock on one side of the cage, and it was fastened securely.

  ‘Shit,’ she said. It was like a cage for a large dog. There was a click, and the flame lit up the small room. Her eyes had
adjusted to the dark now and she could see there was a series of posts mounted on the back wall. She could see shapes and outlines: something long and thin coiled up, and there was a hood with eye holes, and a breathing drum. It was a gas mask. She felt around again. The cage bars were solid, thick metal, but underneath, the base of the cage was wood. Now she had taken off the duct tape, she was able to move more freely around. She swallowed and wiped her nose, feeling the blood starting to clot. She braced herself in the crouching position and put her back against the top of the cage. She rocked from side to side and felt it shift across the floor a couple of centimetres. It wasn’t fixed to the floor. She started to rock it harder, so that it skidded along, away from the brick wall. It took a huge amount of effort and she had to stop a couple of times to catch her breath. She reached through the bars and couldn’t feel the brick wall any more, so she was satisfied she had enough room either side. Moss braced her back against the bars, and rocked the cage from side to side, exploiting its low centre of gravity. The sides of the base started to lift off the floor as she rocked harder. Suddenly, it tipped over and landed with a loud clattering crash which echoed around the basement. Moss cried out as she landed painfully on the left side bars, which now were the floor of the cage.

  She took a moment to catch her breath and then she started to kick at the base board of the cage.

  ‘You. Should. Have. Taken. My. Boots. Off. You. Dumb. Fuck!’ she hissed, punctuating each word with a kick, rhythmically slamming her boots into the base. With each kick, pain jangled in her bones and the metal bars dug into her back and shoulders, but she kept on. Finally, as her feet felt like they were going to explode, the wood cracked – and then her leg went through it. The splinters scraped at her leg and she cried out with pain, but nothing would stop her. She pulled out her leg and started to work on the hole, kicking and pushing and peeling the thick chip board away. It seemed to take forever, but she finally tore her way through, hands and legs filled with splinters. She was free. She scrabbled around in the darkness, managed to find a light switch, and turned it on.