Kingsrise

By Anne Mattias

A gripping urban fantasy mystery - perfect for fans of Rivers of London and Shades of Magic.

A sleepy seaside town on the west coast of England. Two stabbings. The victims: a man called Arthur and a mysterious knight. Drawn into a mythical world of magic and betrayal, ca

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anne Mattias
• Release date: Apr 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9783982518619

Book preview

Chapter 1

Detective Inspector Niamh Khalid did not live a charmed life. At the present moment, she was, in fact, cursing it. She stared with burning eyes at the computer screen in front of her, which showed real-time video footage of the interview room next door.

In it, a young man sat hunched over the plain, rectangular table, his head resting on his arms. Niamh tried unsuccessfully to ignore her rapidly pounding heart, and the queasy mixture of exhaustion, resentment, and guilt in her stomach. The desire to rest her own forehead on the desk became almost overwhelming, but she resisted it. She wasn’t going to give the man standing next to her the satisfaction.

‘I’m sorry to spring this on you, Khalid,’ he said, insincerely. ‘I know this must be a bad ending to a bad night for you.’

An understatement, if ever Niamh had heard one. Last night might well go down as the worst in the history of the Dalton and Kinningsbury Constabulary. Officers had been working flat out for the past twenty-four hours, breaking up fights between drunk revellers, putting out fires – both literally and figuratively, investigating domestic disturbances, muggings, vandalism, the works. It had got so bad that uniforms had been overwhelmed by the sheer number of reported incidents, and plain-clothes officers of all ranks and pay grades had been drafted in to help. Niamh’s night off and her brother Lance’s eighteenth birthday dinner – already a day late – had been among the casualties. So much for becoming a detective and getting off the streets.

Hallo-fucking-ween.

And things were about to get worse.

Niamh heard the noise in the corridor outside swell momentarily, as the door behind her opened and shut. She got up from the office chair she’d been sitting in and turned to look at the man who had entered the room.

Detective Superintendent Eoghan Egerton was tall, mid-fifties, and known for ultra-marathons and an ultra-conservative attitude. Everything about him was obsessively tidy, from his immaculately maintained goatee to the utter lack of creases in his tailored suit.

Niamh was suddenly very aware of the mud stains on her shoes and trouser legs, and the untidy knots in her damp red curls. Egerton’s right eyebrow twitched upwards as he took her in, making it obvious that he did not consider a twenty-four-hour shift a reasonable excuse for the dishevelled state she was in.

‘Good morning, Detective Inspector Khalid,’ he clipped before turning to the man next to Niamh. ‘DI Geraint.’

Geraint dipped his chin in acknowledgement. He was the same age as Niamh – twenty-eight, shorter and wirier than she was but with an ego that more than made up for his height.

‘Sir,’ he said, with exaggerated gravitas that immediately got on Niamh’s nerves. He picked up a slim brown file that lay on the desk next to the computer and handed it to Egerton. The super consulted it briefly before raising his eyes to the computer screen. The boy in the video hadn’t moved. Niamh wondered if he had fallen asleep. She noticed that the dark hair at the back of his neck was sticking up and her fingers itched to smooth it out.

‘So,’ snapped Egerton, ‘here we are again.’ He turned to Niamh with a pitying expression that may have been intended to reassure her but did nothing of the sort. ‘DI Khalid, I’m not going to lie to you. The situation is… awkward, especially as this isn’t the first incident of this kind that your brother has been involved in.’ He tapped the file he was still holding and nodded meaningfully at the screen. ‘Now, we haven’t charged anyone yet…’

‘Yet?’ Niamh was unable to keep the alarm out of her voice.

‘We’re reserving our final decision until we have all the facts,’ Geraint put in, smugly. ‘Your brother and his friends aren’t, ah…’ He hesitated theatrically, glancing at Egerton as though to ensure he had the super’s full attention. ‘They aren’t exactly forthcoming about what happened.’ His expression changed to one of insincere regret. ‘But I think we can count our blessings that the weather kept the usual Halloween revellers away from the Gate last night. Otherwise, we might have had a much more serious incident on our hands.’

Niamh suppressed a shiver, knowing that Geraint wasn’t wrong.

The Gate – an ancient stone arch situated near the top of Kingsrise, the tallest of several hills that surrounded the town of Dalton – was hardly as much of a tourist magnet as Stonehenge or nearby Glastonbury. Nevertheless, the various legends that clung to it like ivy made it popular with a weirder kind of visitor. When still in uniform, Niamh had apprehended dozens of self-proclaimed ghost hunters, druids, witches, and even a married couple who’d claimed to be werewolves.

Years ago, long before Niamh and Lance had moved here, a group of archaeologists had done excavations at the site, speculating that the Gate was, in fact, the last remaining entrance to a larger structure, whose foundations lay buried within the hill itself. However, following a serious accident that had left a university lecturer in a coma, the project had been tied up in lawsuits, run out of funding, and shut down. All that remained of it now was a small, man-made cave near the Gate, where the researchers had unearthed a wall of solid rock and a cluster of rather unspectacular cave drawings. They looked vaguely like runes, but experts suspected them to be fake. More fantastical explanations suggested that the hill itself had once been an ancient fairy fort and that the excavations had angered its denizens.

‘As it is, there will be consequences for drink-driving and setting off illegal fireworks in a public place after the curfew,’ Geraint went on a little belatedly and with deliberate hesitation, which made Niamh realise that he and Egerton had been waiting for some kind of reaction from her. ‘That is, if the butcher shop and the National Trust don’t insist on charges.’ His expression suggested he wished they would.

Overpowered by fatigue, Niamh rubbed her eyes. ‘I know someone who’s a rural surveyor at the National Trust,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I could encourage them not to pursue the matter, if my brother and his friends agree to volunteer for them.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ said Geraint, at once. ‘It would be the second time in two months that you’d be intervening on your brother’s behalf. It may suggest we’re being… disproportionately lenient.’

He looked hopefully at Egerton, who considered each of them in turn. Niamh could guess what was on her superior’s mind. Egerton was eager to keep Dalton’s reputation as a quaint English seaside town – a safe and welcoming place to spend one’s holiday – and vandalizing local youth didn’t exactly fit that picture. Neither would a police force willing to overlook offences committed by its officers’ relatives.

However, Egerton surprised Niamh by saying, ‘I appreciate that these young people acted in very bad taste, and that we are lucky to have avoided a more serious incident’ – he held up a hand when Geraint opened his mouth to speak – ‘but another solid day of rain will take care of much of the evidence. In the absence of that, I think the National Trust would appreciate volunteers. After all,’ he added, with an emphasis that suggested his mind was made up, ‘the sooner we consider this case closed, the sooner they can reopen the site to visitors. And given the amount of paperwork we’ll be dealing with after tonight, I think it makes sense to try and resolve minor incidents without charges.’

Niamh bit back a sigh of relief, hoping that it didn’t show on her face.

‘However…’ Egerton turned to her, glaring. ‘I’m sure I do not have to stress to you, DI Khalid, that the fact that your brother is now of age makes the situation more delicate than last time.’ He once again tapped the brown file he’d been holding before handing it to her. ‘I would welcome it if you made sure that he avoids any further run-ins with our colleagues.’

Niamh nodded. ‘Absolutely, sir.’

She waited for Egerton and Geraint to leave the room before closing her eyes and allowing herself a couple of deep breaths. She listened as Geraint continued to plead with Egerton for approval to conduct additional drug tests on her brother and his friends, but the two men’s voices were soon lost as they walked away down the corridor. Niamh waited another minute or so to make sure they weren’t coming back, then she made her way to the room next door.

Lance looked up when she entered, and Niamh knew instantly that they were headed for a row. He was clearly drunk, squinting slightly as he tried to focus. By the bright light of the halogen lamps on the ceiling, Niamh was struck once again by how different he looked from her. She was blue-eyed, pale, and freckled, but Lance’s skin was bronze, and his were eyes almost as dark as his hair. Ten years her junior but several inches taller and a lot slimmer, he didn’t seem to have any problems attracting the attention of local girls, despite a scar that ran from his bottom lip to his chin, and another one on his forehead which poked out just below the hairline. When he’d been younger and before he’d exchanged his glasses for contacts, it had earned him a rather obvious nickname.

The scars, just like his barely noticeable limp when he walked, were reminders of the violent car accident he had been in, sixteen years ago almost to the day, in which both their parents had been killed. As if one tragedy hadn’t been enough, Lance’s best friend Gareth had drowned in another tragic accident a week after bonfire night three years ago.

Suddenly, Niamh felt terribly guilty that she hadn’t been there for Lance tonight. However, when she sat down opposite him, she caught a whiff of stale weed, and that – together with the stubborn, unrepentant look on her brother’s face – poured cold water on her kindling empathy.

‘You want to tell me what happened?’ she asked as calmly as she could, placing the file Egerton had given her on the table between them.

‘Been asking myself the same question to be honest,’ slurred Lance.

Niamh raised her eyebrows and waited, although the stab of irritation she felt at his response was difficult to ignore.

‘Look,’ he said, leaning back in his chair, yawning, ‘I’ve already told – what’s his face? – DI Geraint. We were just hanging out.’

Niamh glanced at the small camera mounted on the wall above the door. It was connected to the computer she, Geraint, and Egerton had been looking at for the past ten minutes. She was glad no one was watching now.

‘Can we go home, please?’ moaned Lance. ‘I’m tired.’

‘No shit!’ snapped Niamh, all pretence at calmness gone. She leaned across the table, her hand on the slim, brown file. ‘You know they could charge you, right?’

Lance snorted and rolled his eyes at her.

‘Come on,’ he said, half-laughing. ‘It wasn’t that bad. You’ll speak to Geraint; it’ll be fine.’

Niamh stared at him, realising that she wasn’t prepared for this blatant lack of contrition. ‘Listen, if you expect me to step in every time you get yourself into trouble, think again.’ She lowered her voice, although there was no one else there to hear her. ‘Two months, Lance! Two months since your last offence! Do you want to go to court?’

Lance tutted, folded his arms across his chest, and gazed back at her out of half-open eyes in a theatrically bored way that made Niamh even angrier.

‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘Have it your way.’

She opened the file and shoved it angrily towards him.

‘You weren’t just hanging out, were you?’ She mimed quotation marks. ‘You set off fireworks in a public place, which is illegal. You also broke the fireworks curfew by several hours. Use of a category four rocket – which is what you had – by anyone but a trained professional is also an offense.’

‘We didn’t know that!’ interjected Lance, and Niamh thought she saw a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes.

Seizing her advantage, she ignored his interruption. ‘Then there’s criminal damage to the grounds by the Gate – a protected area – and the Gate itself. Fortunately for you, no fire was started, and no one got hurt, though the uniformed constables who arrived on the scene certainly thought so.’

She riffled through the file, took out a photo, and put it in front of him. It looked suitably horrific, the colours and contrasts made starker by the crime scene photographer’s flash: the Gate, covered in blood-red symbols and rude words, the grass around it drenched in a pool of dark, browning liquid; an empty, tipped-over barrel next to it, with the remaining liquid inside – pig’s blood, according to the label – an alarming shade of scarlet.

‘Nice graffiti, by the way,’ Niamh said, indicating the indecipherable, untidy symbols. ‘What was that all about? Game of scare-the-tourists?’

Lance pressed his lips together, avoiding her eyes.

‘Nicking that barrel of pig’s blood from the butcher’s amounts to theft, of course,’ Niamh went on, ‘not to mention breaking and entering—’

‘We didn’t bloody break and enter; we had a key!’ snarled Lance.

‘That’s a technicality! By the way, how d’you think Finn’s father is going to feel when he finds out you used his key to burgle the shop where he works?’

If Niamh was honest with herself, she wasn’t keen on the answer to that particular question. Phineas Jackson’s father did not have a clean police record himself. Officers had been called to the Jacksons’ house more than once in the past, usually when Mr Jackson had had a few too many at the pub and started having a go at his wife and son.

‘Which leaves us with causing a public nuisance,’ Niamh continued when Lance didn’t answer, ‘possession of an illegal substance – that’s marijuana to you – and drink-dr—’ Unexpectedly, her voice broke. She swallowed painfully and felt her eyes well up. ‘Drink-driving. Honestly.’

‘I wasn’t driving!’ protested Lance, loudly.

‘Oh, and the others were stone-cold sober, were they?’

Niamh watched what remained of his swagger flicker and die like a snuffed-out candle. He looked away and blinked rapidly several times.

‘Nothing happened, Viv,’ he mumbled, using the nickname that dated back to the days when he’d been so small, he hadn’t been able to pronounce her actual name. She wondered if it was more than a reflex; if he used it just then because he, too, was inevitably reminded of the time just after their parents had died.

She’d read the case report years after it had happened. The severely inebriated driver of a small lorry had swerved into oncoming traffic, causing Nasim Khalid’s car to plunge off the side of the road and down a steep ravine.

Of all the possible nights…

Her anger now warring with sadness and guilt, Niamh was on the verge of reaching for Lance’s hand when a knock on the door startled them both.

A young woman poked her head inside.

‘Guv?’ she said. ‘Something’s come up.’

‘Bit busy here, Agyeman,’ said Niamh, voice brittle.

Constable Agyeman hesitated for a brief moment, in which she seemed to decide that what had brought her here was more urgent that what she’d walked in on.

‘Trust me, Guv, you want this.’

There was something in her voice – a morbid excitement so common in young members of the major incident team – that made Niamh think she was unlikely to catch up on sleep any time soon.

‘You and I aren’t done,’ she said to Lance, pushing back her chair. The stubborn mask of pretend indifference was back on his face. Their moment of shared grief had passed. ‘I’ll find someone to take you home and you’ll stay there till I get back.’

She did not fail to notice the face he made at her when she turned to leave the room.

Outside, she stopped for a moment and closed her eyes, pressing the balls of her hands into them. Her head was beginning to ache.

‘Guv?’

Niamh lowered her hands. Percy Walker, her sergeant, stood in front of her, holding two paper cups of coffee. Despite the lines of fatigue in his face, he looked a lot younger than thirty, somewhat like a ginger Paul McCartney, with an equally unflattering haircut.

‘Thought you might need this,’ he said, handing Niamh one of the cups.

‘What’s happened?’ She sipped the hot coffee gratefully as they made their way down the corridor.

‘Body on the beach,’ said Walker, with an excited glance at her.

Niamh didn’t like the thrill she felt at the words.

* * *

It was still dark when they got to Dalton Beach, but at least the rain had stopped. The pavement and the benches along the promenade glistened wet. The scene might have been peaceful, had it not been for the cacophony of light coming from the police cars parked on the road behind them.

Despite the early hour, a crowd had started gathering, kept at a distance by uniformed constables and Police Community Support Officers. A small group of scene-of-crime officers was milling around inside a cone of forensic floodlight by the water’s edge.

‘DI Khalid! Niamh!’

A man waved at them past a stony-faced constable nearly twice his size.

Niamh rolled her eyes. Ashley Kaye, reporter for the Dalton Daily Star, ranked very low on the list of people she wanted to see right now. She kept walking, dismissing him with a passing glance.

‘Pathologist not here yet?’ she asked Walker, noticing a conspicuous absence among the SOCOs and forensic specialists. The crime scene photographer’s flash periodically dipped the scene in even brighter light.

‘On his way. We woke him up.’

It wasn’t the first dead body either of them had seen, and Niamh’s by now well-schooled mind immediately started establishing the facts of what she was looking at. The body of a young man somewhat older than herself. Mid-thirties, she guessed. He lay on his front, his right arm trapped beneath his body, right leg at an odd angle. Apart from that, no obvious injuries that indicated cause of death. He was wearing a white shirt that looked too big for him and skinny trousers or leggings that stuck to his legs. No shoes, or socks. Strands of wet, fair hair framed his anaemically white face, the right side turned upwards, left cheek resting on the sand. His lips were blue.

‘Don’t think he’s been here long,’ said Walker, crouching next to the body. ‘No obvious signs of decomposition.’

He stood up and approached the water, pensively looking up and down the beach, then at the sea, and finally at the pier that loomed a little further away.

‘What are you thinking?’ asked Niamh, joining him, careful not to let the waves lick at her boots.

Walker gestured at the pier. ‘Longshore drift might carry a body from there, round there’ – he described a wide semicircle of the water with his arm – ‘all the way back to here.’

Niamh looked at him, one eyebrow raised.

‘My uncle was a sailor, Guv,’ he reminded her.

A cold breeze blew spray in their faces and Niamh shivered. She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘You think he may have jumped?’

Walker shrugged awkwardly as he turned his collar up against the chill. ‘Wouldn’t be the first time.’

Niamh nodded, sadly. ‘Let’s order a search of the pier,’ she said. ‘I don’t hold out much hope that we’ll find anything but—’

Shouts of alarm cut her off and they both spun around to the group of officers behind them.

‘Holy shit,’ cursed Walker. People had recoiled from the body, forming a wide circle around the photographer who now sat in the sand, eyes and mouth open wide with shock. Next to her, the man they’d assumed was dead crouched on his knees, coughing and spitting convulsively.

‘What the fuck?’

Niamh and Walker covered the short distance between them and the group of horrified-looking officers in a few quick strides.

‘Sir?’ Niamh dropped to her knees next to the man who was retching now, his right hand pressed to his stomach. Spit and water dripped down his chin. Niamh reached out to touch his shoulder. Her fingertips had barely made contact when he grabbed her wrist much more quickly and painfully than she’d have thought he was able, and lifted his head to stare directly into her eyes. The look of primal panic on his face made her recoil, but she was unable to wrench her hand out of his grip.

‘Woah, easy, mate!’ said Walker, leaning on the man’s arm to get him to release his hold, but without success.

‘Stop it, Walker, you’re breaking my wrist,’ panted Niamh between gritted teeth.

Walker didn’t get a chance to apologise or draw back because the man’s other hand grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him so close that they were nose to nose.

‘Murdered,’ choked the man.

Or at least that’s what Niamh thought he said because the word was spoken in such a thick, strange accent that she couldn’t be sure she’d heard him correctly.

‘Say again?’

Niamh forced herself to stop trying to tug her wrist away.

The man did not repeat what he had said. His eyes darted back and forth between her and Walker, before sweeping across the water, the sand, and the assembled officers, who stood frozen in shocked surprise. He looked desperate, panicked, clearly unable to make sense of what he was seeing. With a frightened, strangled sound somewhere between a sob and a growl, his hold on Niamh and Walker slackened as he fell over to the side and passed out.

‘Son of a b—’ began Walker, but Niamh reached out her now free hand to point at the man’s stomach, where a plume of red had appeared on his shirt and was quickly growing larger. She turned around to the crowd of first responders who were watching them from what they seemed to consider a safe distance.

‘We need a paramedic over here!’ she shouted. ‘Right now!’

Chapter 2

‘You all right, Walker?’

Niamh sat across from Walker in the hospital waiting room. He looked pallid and ill at ease, clutching the same plastic cup of tea he’d been holding for the past forty-five minutes. Niamh was on her third cup.

‘I don’t like hospitals,’ Walker admitted, and Niamh nodded.

‘Me neither.’

It wasn’t quite true, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell Walker that. Niamh knew that for most people hospitals weren’t happy places, even though to her they felt familiar in a not entirely unpleasant way.

Until the age of ten, Niamh had spent considerable time in and out of Leeds General Infirmary, confined to its wards time and again by regular chest infections and chronic asthma. Niamh’s mother had been raising her daughter alone; as far away as possible from the disapproving jibes and glares of her own mother. Struggling with a job and the demands of a university course she was desperately trying to finish, Vivien Reilly hadn’t been around her daughter as much as Niamh would have liked. Niamh had secretly cherished the times in hospital when doctors and nurses had fussed over her, and her mother had sat by her bed and read to her for an hour a day. It was where they had first met Nasim Khalid, Niamh’s paediatrician.

Nasim had taught Niamh to sketch, to observe what went on around her and commit it to paper. After he and Vivien got married, they had bought a small cottage on the shore of a lake in the Somerset Levels. Niamh remembered sitting on the lakeshore with her parents and baby Lance in the evenings, Vivien reading stories while Nasim and Niamh painted.

During that one last, endless summer they had spent together as a family, before the terrible accident that had torn Niamh’s world apart, they had moved on to watercolours.

‘Gentle with that brush, little lady,’ her mother had said with a wink, knowing how cross and impatient Niamh became when what she painted didn’t quite match what she saw before her. Nasim had offered up ‘little lady’ one evening, after Niamh had managed her first successful attempt at breaststroke, and both parents had laughed at how chuffed Niamh had been at the endearment.

In the weeks following her parents’ deaths, Niamh had sketched and sketched as she sat by Lance’s hospital bed, watching him recover – mere days after his second birthday – from the tragedy only he had survived. Niamh knew that if not for the kindness and devotion of the hospital staff to the children of Dr Khalid she may have lost her brother too. It was something she’d never forgotten, even after grief had slowly morphed into a more distant and bearable kind of sadness.

‘Inspector Khalid?’

A physician entered the room and Niamh and Walker got to their feet. Dr Lionel was a familiar face. He was in his mid-fifties, with the lean physique of someone who paid attention to his own health as much as that of his patients. He offered his hand, and Niamh shook it.

‘Thank you for waiting.’

‘Thank you for speaking to us,’ she said, and Lionel nodded, stifling a yawn. He looked as well rested as she felt.

‘Long night?’ she asked, out of genuine sympathy.

‘You have no—’ Lionel checked himself and grinned apologetically. ‘Yes, you probably do.’ He removed his horn-rimmed glasses, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. ‘Surely, you must know that there isn’t a lot I can tell you. Not without consent or the necessary paperwork.’

He sounded sincerely apologetic, but Niamh knew him well enough to recognise the resolve beneath the kindness. Lionel respected his patients and their confidentiality; he wasn’t going to give up sensitive information easily.

‘Any chance of speaking to the man himself?’ Niamh asked, not holding out much hope.

Lionel shook his head. ‘Not for a while, no.’

She nodded. They’d need to formally request the release of medical information and the victim’s clothes. And they’d need exclusion prints from hospital staff.

‘There’s one thing I feel obligated to tell you, though,’ Lionel said, after a short pause. ‘I don’t think his injury was self-inflicted.’

Niamh looked at Walker, who raised his eyebrows.

‘What makes you say that?’

Lionel put his glasses back on and blinked at her. ‘The patient sustained sharp-force trauma to his abdomen, resulting in substantial internal organ damage, and severe sepsis. Judging by the angle of the incision, I don’t think he could have done it to himself.’

‘Not attempted suicide then,’ said Niamh, thinking that this explained why Lionel had agreed to speak to them; an injury inflicted by an unknown third person which posed a threat to life gave the doctor grounds to release limited information to the police.

‘Could it have been an accident?’ asked Walker. ‘Could he have tripped and fallen on something?’

‘I can’t completely rule it out but, frankly, the injury seems too clean for that.’ Lionel sighed. ‘What it most looks like to me is a cut from a broad, very sharp blade, but—’

The doctor’s mobile beeped, and he glanced at it, frowning.

‘But?’ prompted Walker, quickly.

‘But I didn’t find any impression or bruises from a hilt on the skin and it’s too deep and wide for a knife wound.’ Lionel spread his arms, helplessly. ‘I’m not going to lie; it’s a strange injury and I wouldn’t want to speculate on the object that caused it. I’m sorry, I have to go.’ He held up his phone, gave them a quick nod, then vanished out the door.

‘Possible violent crime.’ Niamh turned to Walker who frowned at her.

‘Maybe he said murdered, after all,’ he suggested, referring to a conversation they’d had earlier about what the man had been trying to communicate before he passed out.

Niamh shook her head and rubbed her eyes. ‘Let’s not tie ourselves up in knots trying to guess what he said. We need uniforms to go door to door on the seafront and look for potential witnesses. Get someone to check missing persons. Let’s find out if this guy’s absence has been noticed anywhere yet.’

* * *

Nearly twelve hours later, Niamh felt that she might faint from exhaustion. She and Walker had spent the day trying to get the investigation up and running, without sufficient staff to do so.

The Dalton and Kinningsbury Constabulary was small police force, responsible for the safety and security of Dalton’s population of just over 100,000, the smaller towns of Kinningsbury and Glendale further along the coast, and the villages in between.

In an effort to keep the force in place despite years of budget cuts, the majority of its individual police stations had been closed and their officers reassigned to the constabulary’s main headquarters or transferred out of the area to Devon and Cornwall Police. With resources overstretched as a result, Niamh didn’t rate her chances of bartering with Egerton for additional staff, especially after last night’s onslaught of incidents.

By late afternoon her existing team’s lack of sleep started to show. Eager though they were to get stuck in, many of them had been awake for much of the past forty-eight hours. Ignoring any protestations that they were ready to spend the night at work, Niamh sent them home, while staying late herself, reading and updating their initial reports.

When she finally stepped out into the crisp air of Saturday evening just after 9.30 p.m. and made her way across the large car park outside Dalton Police Centre, Niamh wondered – not for the first time – if the architects had taken their cue from the advocates of brutalism to strike fear in the hearts of any who entered here. A squat, concrete monstrosity dating back to the sixties, the building was the textbook definition of an eyesore.

The impression of general doom and gloom wasn’t helped by the large graveyard behind it, whose gravestones poked out of the ground like jagged, broken teeth. The road the building perched on, Ava Lane, was perfectly generic, as UK streets went, despite its poetic-sounding name. Two off-licences, a mobile phone repair shop, a small café, a pound shop, a chippy and – inevitably – a pub. Niamh briefly considered grabbing a pint but decided against it. She needed to get home to Lance. They had a conversation to finish.

She suppressed a groan when she spotted the person waiting by her car.

Ashley Kaye’s posture was relaxed and deceptively unthreatening, but Niamh wasn’t fooled; leaning casually against the door on the driver’s side, he had made it impossible for her to get into her car and ignore him at the same time.

‘Evening,’ he said pleasantly, flashing her a smile. ‘Long day?’

Niamh didn’t bother answering the question. She tried to push past him, but Kaye shifted his stance, blocking her way. Niamh looked him straight in the eye. He wasn’t much taller than she was, which helped.

‘Step aside, please.’

‘You look tired,’ he said, ignoring her. ‘How about I buy you dinner?’

‘How about you let me go home and get some sleep?’

Kaye raised his eyebrows so high they almost vanished beneath the dark hair that curled on his forehead. ‘No leads on your mysterious undead body on the beach, then?’

Niamh snorted. ‘You may want to reconsider that headline,’ she said, regretting it instantly.

‘So, you agree there’s a headline?’

‘You know I’m not going to comment. Get in touch with the press office. You’ve… cultivated contacts there, haven’t you?’

Kaye put a hand to his chest. ‘Now that insinuation is just plain hurtful.’

‘I wasn’t insinuating anything,’ said Niamh, ‘But interesting that you should think so.’

He laughed. ‘Let me at least buy you a drink. Let’s have a chat. Not about work, just…’

Niamh rolled her eyes demonstratively, walked around the car, and opened the passenger door. Before Kaye could stop her, she got in, shut the door, and locked it.

Kaye watched with an amused smile as she awkwardly climbed over the gear stick and into the driver’s seat. He knocked on the window.

‘Another time, then?’

Niamh glared at him as she started the engine and put the car in gear.

‘Not in a million years,’ she muttered, watching him grin at her in the rear-view mirror as she pulled away.

Chapter 3

Early the following morning, Niamh back was at her laptop. Sipping tea and catching up on paperwork she’d neglected during the week, she took a moment to appreciate what felt like the first few minutes of quiet in a long time. Lance appeared to still be asleep; she hadn’t heard any noises from his room yet.

Next to her computer on the kitchen table, her mobile lay atop a copy of the Sunday paper. ‘POLICE INVESTIGATING MYSTERY OF MAN FOUND AT DALTON BEACH’ was the front-page headline. For now, Ashley Kaye had mostly stuck with the few facts the constabulary’s press office had released to the media the day before: the discovery at Dalton Beach of an unidentified white male with a critical injury. Niamh had agreed with Egerton that it was best not to release the exact details of the man’s condition just yet. Holding back information would make it easier to discriminate between real witnesses and those only looking for attention. It may also be critical in identifying suspects.

When her phone started vibrating, Niamh jumped so hard that she knocked over her teacup, spilling its contents on the tabletop and across the paper.

‘Bollocks,’ she muttered, moving her phone and laptop out of the way, and reaching for the tea towel. Only after she’d mopped up the tea did she look at her phone. It had stopped ringing by then, but a small box appeared on the screen announcing the arrival of a new voicemail. Seeing that the missed call had been from Lance, she momentarily looked up at the ceiling, puzzled. Then she dialled his number, irritated that he must have snuck out while she’d been asleep.

‘What took you so long?’

Her brother’s voice was trembling, and Niamh choked on the angry rebuke that had been sitting on her tongue.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘You need to come at once,’ panted Lance, and in the background, Niamh thought she heard someone weeping. A male voice that Niamh recognised as belonging to Lance’s friend Ben, snarled, ‘For fuck’s sake, get her away from there!’

‘Lance!’ barked Niamh. ‘Where are you?’

‘The hiking shelter in the woods below the Gate. Please come. Bring the police.’

Niamh was out the kitchen door within seconds, pulling on trainers and grabbing her coat with her phone still pressed to her ear.

‘What’s going on, Lance?’

A feeling of dread thumped into her stomach when her brother sobbed, ‘Someone’s dead.’

She grabbed her car keys from the sideboard next to the front door and ran outside.

‘What do you mean, someone’s dead?’

‘There’s a dead body in the woods,’ Lance yelled, hysterically. ‘Behind the hiking shelter below the Gate. A man.’

Now behind the steering wheel, Niamh noticed Aggie, their next-door neighbour, watching her from behind her living room curtains.

‘Okay, listen,’ said Niamh, with practised calm, ‘I’m going to hang up now and call Walker. I’ll get someone out there to secure the scene as soon as possible. Don’t touch anything and try not to panic. I’m on my way.’

There was nothing but silence at the other end of the line.

‘Lance, did you hear me? I’m on my way. Don’t touch anything. Stay away from the body.’

‘Okay,’ choked Lance. ‘Please hurry.’

Heart hammering, Niamh hung up and transferred her phone to the holder on her dashboard, giving Aggie, who was still watching, a quick nod. Niamh started the car, then called Walker.

‘Guv?’ he said when he picked up after the third ring, voice slightly rushed.

‘Walker,’ panted Niamh as she reversed her car out of the driveway. ‘Where are you?’

‘In the shower, I mean, at home. Is something wrong?’

‘I need you to get to the hiking shelter below the Gate on the west side of Kingsrise. Call Agyeman and tell her we need PCSOs and SOCOs. And bring the pathologist.’

‘You’re not serious!’ said Walker, putting two and two together.

‘My brother and his friends have—’ Her voice cracked ever so briefly, and she swallowed. ‘They’ve found a body.’

‘Oh shit,’ said Walker.

‘You can say that again. Be quick. I’m on my way there now.’

Niamh ended the call and tore down the small, quiet street where she and Lance lived at a speed that was well above any acceptable limit.

* * *

Walker had been quick. Just as Niamh turned the corner off the high street and into the narrow hiking trail that led towards the Gate from Dalton’s historic town square, two police cars appeared in her rear-view mirror. They sped after her, sirens blaring. Given the season and the early hour, there were few people out and about, but she fully expected those who lived in the flats above the shops to be at their windows by now, wondering why police were racing up a woodland trail on a Sunday morning.

Niamh’s Mini bumped and jostled on the uneven ground which fell away sharply on her right, allowing a view of the town below and the sea beyond. The steep drop was made no less daunting by the trees that clung to the hillside, swaying in gusts of wind blowing in from the Bristol Channel. To her left, the hill continued to rise steeply, the rocks between the tree trunks covered in moss, grass, and fallen leaves. The incline blocked out much of the early light, making the narrow trail even trickier to negotiate, but Niamh barely slowed down until she reached the wooden hiking shelter nestled next to the path about two-thirds of the way up the hill. It was little more than a roof supported by six stocky beams, with a heavy oak table and two benches beneath it, but somehow it reminded Niamh of a spider, the way it seemed to crouch between the trees. The ground levelled off here, forming a natural flat on which the shelter and the trees behind it sat. Beyond the flat, the woods made way for a wide meadow which rose in a gentle slope to the top of the hill. Midway between the treeline and the hilltop loomed the Gate, its heavy stones as dirty grey as the sky, the man-made cave behind it – barely changed since it had been abandoned years ago – like a black stain on the otherwise pristine landscape.

Lance and his friends were waiting by the shelter, all of them pale and frightened looking. Ben Ellis-Jones, tall and skinny, auburn curls hidden beneath a black beanie, was pacing back and forth, tugging nervously at a bandage around his left hand. Finn Jackson, shorter but just as thin, ginger-haired, and freckled, stood a few feet away from Ben, a cigarette in one shaking hand. Next to Finn, Hugo Balfour, though slightly hunched with his shoulders rounded and arms folded tightly across his chest, appeared even taller than he was anyway. A haughty scowl rendered his otherwise handsome face unappealing. Piers Carver and Jasminder Nagra sat on a bench inside the shelter, Piers’s arm curled comfortingly around Jasminder, whose face was in her hands. She looked tiny next to Piers’s bulk, her long black hair a sharp contrast to his shockingly blond crew cut. Niamh guessed it had been her who’d been weeping in the background when Lance had called. Lance was crouching some distance from the others. He watched as Niamh squeezed her car as close to the shelter as possible to leave room for the police vehicles behind her. Even so, the space was getting crowded. Getting an ambulance up here was going to be challenge.

When Niamh emerged from her car, Lance straightened up and walked towards her. Any anger that had been left over from two nights ago evaporated when she saw the shocked disbelief on his face.

‘Oh, Lance.’

Niamh bit back tears, but when she reached out to put her arms around him, Lance evaded her, glancing at Ben who had stopped his pacing and was watching in silence. Lance turned away from Niamh and jerked his head at the trees behind the shelter.

‘He’s in there.’

He went ahead, leaving Niamh to catch up, breathless and hurt. She waved over Gwen Agyeman and the other officers, who climbed out of their cars just as Walker’s orange VW pulled up behind them. Dr Turner, the forensic pathologist, was in the passenger seat.

A short walk into the trees, Lance stopped. Niamh held her breath as the last flicker of remaining hope that this may be a false alarm went out. She was looking at a dead body; a man, early twenties, smooth, pale skin, and raven-coloured hair. Bizarrely, he was in full body armour. Not a bullet-proof vest or paddings, but a chain mail shirt, gauntlets, and protective plates on his chest, arms, and shoulders that Niamh didn’t know the correct names for. Even his feet were shod in metal.

Next to her, Lance drew a shuddering breath.

‘Lance, I want you to go with DC Agyeman,’ Niamh said quietly, and Agyeman, who until now had respectfully kept her distance, stepped forward. ‘Agyeman, please take my brother and his friends back to Ava Lane. They’ll need to make statements. Ask one of the other officers to accompany you. I’ll catch up with you as soon as I can.’

Agyeman nodded and Lance, after refusing his sister’s embrace, seemed to have no objections to the constable putting her hand on his arm and leading him away. Niamh’s throat became so tight that it hurt. When he was almost out of sight, Lance turned to look back at her. For a moment, Niamh was reminded of the small boy who’d walked her to the corner of their street in the mornings before school and waved at her until she could no longer see him. He had looked so small and forlorn that Niamh had hated leaving him behind with their grandmother.

Then Agyeman and Lance vanished from sight and Niamh turned back to where the dead body lay. Walker and Turner were already hunched over it and Niamh stepped closer to look. Not the worst body she’d ever seen, she thought gratefully. There were no immediate signs of violence and the man’s features looked as if he was merely sleeping.

‘Halloween party gone wrong?’ asked Walker, indicating the man’s armour. ‘Went all out for his costume, didn’t he?’

Niamh frowned, looking around. ‘How did he end up here?’

Walker turned back in the direction they had come from.

‘Maybe people had a little booze-up by the shelter,’ he suggested. ‘This bloke stumbles off into the woods for a piss, trips, hits his head. End of story.’

‘Maybe,’ mused Niamh, accepting the rubber gloves Dr Turner handed her.

After slipping on his own gloves, the pathologist cautiously lifted the hair at the back of the dead man’s neck, then gently turned his head. ‘No obvious