Shadow Of Malice

  WWW.BENBRUCE.CO.UK

  First published in Great Britain on Amazon Kindle Direct in 2019 by Ben Bruce

  Ben Bruce has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 to be identified as the author of this work.

  Cover design by Sean Strong

  Edited by Bee-Edited

  Thanks to Mark and Becka for their feedback.

  This book is a work of fiction, except in the case of historical fact. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN 9781999846947

  For my parents.

  1

  It was raining heavily, soaking him to the skin. The few clothes, if you could truly call them clothes, offered no resistance to the element’s torturous assault on his body.

  Not that he noticed.

  He didn’t feel the rain’s icy touch on his skin or the wind slicing through him, cutting into his fragile frame as it sought out the wounds that crisscrossed all over him, making them ache more and more. The longer he went on, the more the heavy rags he wore slapped against the cuts and sores on his body, stinging every time the material found an open wound.

  Not that he noticed.

  His bare feet scuffed against the wet tarmac. The rough texture of the road had already cut his feet, opening up old wounds, creating new fissures from which blood seeped out, spreading like dark red clouds in puddles, marking his route. He stumbled, knowing that his legs weren’t working how they were supposed to, but not really understanding why. He didn’t have time to understand why. He only had one thing in mind.

  The streetlights seemed to be looking for him, their pools of light spreading out, reaching towards him, hoping to snare him, illuminate him, expose him. He knew that he had to stay away from them, but the nearer he got to his destination, the harder it was to stay in the shadows.

  He continued forward, hoping that he was heading in the right direction. How could he know though? This wasn’t a place he knew. It wasn’t a place he had ever lived. He didn’t know where he was, he couldn’t even be sure he was still in his own country. Everything seemed strange, everything scared him. He just wanted to find his destination. To be safe.

  Would he be safe?

  He had been told they wouldn’t believe him. That they would simply take him and return him back where he came from, but he knew he couldn’t believe that anymore. He had believed it for too long. He had to believe something else now.

  Maybe it was the first springs of adolescence, or a deeply hidden genetic trait that had come from his forefathers, but he had started to ask questions. Quietly, he had tested the limits to see if he could find a chink in their logic. He knew he had let that message keep him captive as much as the chains, locks, ropes, and cells they had used. Now, he ignored that message. Something from his life before, something his carer had always told him had finally won out. “Always trust the police, son,” his carer had said. “They’re here to help.”

  He had to believe it was true. If it wasn’t, then he would be caught again, and he would be punished. If that happened, he hoped they would kill him. That was better than the life he had lived for the last… how long was it? He didn’t know. He didn’t even know how old he was anymore. He must have missed so many birthdays. Too many to even count. It felt like a lifetime. It had been a lifetime for him. A lifetime he didn’t want to be part of anymore. However old he was, he had lived long enough like that, and if the alternative was death, then that was better than staying there.

  Even he knew, despite his young age, that such a realisation was a drastic one to reach. He had been five – he could count to five when he had gone into the house – and now he knew he was older. Much older. He had been able to tell that by looking at the other children that had arrived after him. They seemed to get smaller and smaller. Maybe they were bringing younger children, that was probably happening as well, but he knew he was becoming one of the older ones, and that meant that, sooner or later, his time would be up.

  He stumbled on, wobbling from side to side, panting as he went, wondering if he would ever find what he was looking for. Perhaps this town didn’t have one? That was possible. It didn’t look the biggest place in the world. The roads were quiet. All the shops and pubs looked shut. There were no lights on in any of the houses. Perhaps this was just a village. He knew about villages; he had been to some on trips to the petting farm with the foster home before all this happened. Villages had farms, they had post offices, but they didn’t always have police stations.

  As he ran on, he became certain this wasn’t a village. The buildings seemed to go on and on, and he found himself heading deeper and deeper into the warren of streets. The buildings got bigger, closer together. This had to be the right place.

  Still the rain poured, the wind howled, his eyes stung. Was it from tears? Was he crying? He didn’t know. He hadn’t cried for a long time. He had shut that side of himself down a long time ago, a weakness that he never wanted to show anymore. Emotion got you into trouble in the house. It got you hurt, got you killed. He had learned about the hurt and heard about the killed. Some people left and never came back. He had been lucky; he hadn’t been one. Until now. But this was different.

  Finally, he saw what he was looking for. The blue light from the sign glowing like a beacon of hope, and now he knew he was crying. He gulped as he ran, getting closer and closer, his feet slapping on the wet slabs below, his head bobbling on his weakening body.

  When was the last time he ate?

  He scrambled up the stairs on his hands and knees and pushed the glass door to the reception room open, spilling inside and falling to the floor.

  “Help,” he croaked.

  The officer behind the desk looked on with shock. “What the hell?” he exclaimed, standing up from his desk.

  The boy looked up and saw the officer standing there for a moment. It felt like forever, but finally, the man moved, opening the door as he scurried towards him, bending down.

  “You alright, lad? Can you hear me?” the officer asked, scooping him up in his arms, but there was no response. The boy, exhausted from his efforts, was on the verge of passing out. He felt the relief, and the exhaustion hit him in unison as the warmth of the officer’s grasp made him realise how cold he had been out there.

  “I need some help here!” the officer hollered to his colleagues deeper in the station before grabbing his radio and calling for an ambulance. The child’s eyes flickered open, and he looked at the police officer. He closed them again. He was safe; the officer would help him. The police always help people. That’s what he had been told.

  2

  Yorkshire hadn’t quite been as Thea Watts had expected. For a woman who had spent her whole life in London and the South, she had grown up on the idea of it being a bit “grim up north,” but from the moment she had arrived, she had known that was wrong.

  York might have been a city, but it was different than London in many ways. It didn’t have the same sprawling reach of the capital. It didn’t take long at all to be outside of the urban area and into the often-spectacular countryside that surrounded it. The Yorkshire Dales lay to the west, whilst the Yorkshire Moors were to the northeast. Thea had visited both and fell in love with the seclusion.

  There was Leeds as well if she needed to get more of a metropolitan feel, but even that, compared to the vastness of London, felt small and intimate. Everything was a different pace. It suited her right now. She had all the freedom in the world to think and reflect on what had happened before.

  It had been eight months since she left the NCA. She had asked for the transfer, but she knew she would have been pushed. Her name had been noted, her card marked. Sooner or later, they would have found a way to get her out of
the firing line, and by asking for a transfer, at the very least, she still had a career.

  The move away from London followed, and now Thea Watts found herself in the CID offices of the Fulford Road Police Station in York. It was a dated building but still of a decent size. Inside, the place looked like it might crumble at the touch, it was so desperately in need of renovation. Everything was old and falling apart, at complete odds with the modern NCA offices in London. No one seemed to mind, however. No one seemed to care.

  She had been seconded to the Sexual Assaults unit. It was somewhere no one wanted to be. Only a very hardened person could hear some of the stories that came through her unit and not be touched by them.

  That was becoming a problem. At least, it was becoming a problem according to her Sergeant, Oliver Wilkes. He was a well-meaning man, someone who Thea liked. He wasn’t like Frank who had been decidedly old school. Wilkes was one of the new breed of middle-management types. Positive reinforcement, hands-on with his people, always making sure to look after their mental wellbeing. Not a bad idea considering the sort of cases they dealt with in his team.

  He sat there, opposite her now in his office. He wore a smart grey suit, white shirt, and dark blue tie, his light brown hair neatly cut, short, and well styled on top, fading down to a trace of stubble that followed his strong jawline. Even sitting, you could still see that he was taller than most, six-five, but slender. No extra muscle, no hint of fat. Healthy looking, like a long-distance runner perhaps.

  “Thea.” He had his head cocked slightly as he spoke. Empathy. “I do worry, you know.” His accent wasn’t Yorkshire, that was clear. Perhaps the north Midlands, Lincolnshire, something like that. Thea had never asked. As much as Wilkes was a nice guy, they were never going to be friends.

  “About what, sir?” she asked. She hadn’t wanted to sound surly, but she knew she had.

  “You’ve been here a while now. You know what this job is like, it takes a toll. You need people around you to talk to, and from what I hear, you’re not really doing that. Is there someone at home you’re talking to?”

  “No, boss, there’s no one. But I’m good. Honest.”

  “I know you are now.” Thea shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She knew where this was going. “Thing is, this sort of stuff creeps up on you later on. It hits you in the middle of the night, when you’re staring at the ceiling struggling to sleep, and then it doesn’t want to go away. I’ve been there.”

  Thea nodded. She knew Wilkes was waiting for her to say something, but there was nothing to say. He was right. It would get to her. It had to. She’d deal with it then.

  Wilkes nodded, clearly sensing that Thea wasn’t going to carry the conversation on. “All I’m saying is that we’ve got a good team here.” Thea knew that was a lie, and she knew Wilkes knew it was a lie. He wasn’t stupid, he knew the true colours of some of his officers. “Take the time to go for a drink with them. Integrate. I’m not saying pour your heart out now, just make sure you’re ready to have someone around when you absolutely have to talk to someone.”

  Thea sighed, trying her best again not to sound petulant. “I will, just in my own time.” She tried to make that sound like a request.

  “That’s all I’m asking. Go get some lunch or something, take an hour.” Wilkes smiled.

  Thea stood. “Thanks, sir.”

  “Crack on.” Wilkes gestured for her to leave. It was his customary sign off.

  Thea stepped back out into the main office. It was a tatty space, a dour green carpet, cheap desks and chairs, aging computers, paperwork strewn all over the place. The phone on one of the desks was ringing, the main line to the office. Another case. Thea had her orders, however, and she walked past it to her desk.

  “You not getting that?” another Detective Constable on shift, Chris Randle, called at her. He was a guy fast approaching his forties who should have been a salesman, such was his lack of earnestness. He wasn’t a cop. He was an embarrassment, and how he had found himself in a role such as this was beyond Thea.

  “Got to head out,” Thea explained, shrugging back in the general direction of Wilkes’ office.

  “Bloody hell,” muttered Randle, not even attempting to mask his disdain at having to do some actual work.

  Thea collected her phone and car keys from her desk, half listening in, picking up the thread of the conversation, as someone from uniform, no doubt, began to relate the details of a case to Randle. He sat there disinterested, not even taking notes. There was no way he was taking this case the moment the phone rang, that was clear. Thea had become used to it; she had allowed that to go over her. Someone in uniform would do the job, and she hoped they would do it well. She had almost stopped listening when he dropped the bomb.

  “Listen,” Randle said to whoever was on the other end of the line. “There’s rape, and then there’s proper rape.”

  Thea stopped what she was doing. She couldn’t have carried on if she wanted to, the red mist descending on her in seconds, focusing her mind solely on DC Randle.

  The office was empty. Just her and Randle. Wilkes couldn’t see them from where he was sat. Randle kept talking on the phone, excusing himself from the crime, making his case for inaction as watertight as possible. He never saw Thea pace silently up behind him. She waited.

  Randle hung up the phone. He still had no idea that Thea was standing behind him. The first indication he had was when he felt his chair begin to tip quickly backwards. His body braced itself, he pushed forward, a natural reaction to arrest the imbalance, but it didn’t work. Thea had a firm grip, both hands, she was pushing down hard. The chair and Chris Randle tumbled backwards, slamming down onto the floor.

  He gawped upwards in shock at Thea, who quickly placed her foot down on his face and pushed hard, squashing his head down and to the left.

  “There’s assault, and then there’s real assault,” she had snarled at him. She pushed her foot down a little harder for good measure, then snapped it up, turning and walking out of the office.

  She had barely made it to the front door of the station when her mobile rang. She expected it to be Wilkes calling her back up to explain herself, but the number was from another station, Pickering, which was on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors, northeast of York.

  “CID,” she answered and immediately felt annoyed at the despondent tone of her voice.

  “How do,” a proper Yorkshire accent came across the line, probably an older officer, someone born and bred, serving his local community. “This is Sergeant Rankine out at Pickering. I’ve got a lad here who came in last night.”

  “Pickering?” Thea asked, “Hasn’t that got its own CID?”

  “I know, I know,” sighed the Sergeant, “but this lad’s tale, well, I might just be airing on the side of caution, but if it’s true, I wanted it to be outside the area who handled it.”

  “What’s the story?”

  “It’s probably nothing,” Rankine began, which Thea knew instantly meant it was something. “We ain’t got much out of him, poor thing’s proper shell-shocked, but he said there was a house he was being held in. I think for a long time, like years.”

  “Years?” Thea raised her eyebrows.

  “He said he were five when he went in and he ain’t five now,” Rankine explained. “If his story is half right, it’s bigger than us. It’s definitely one for you lot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, he said there were police officers there who were in on it.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “We took him to Malton to the hospital to get checked out.”

  “I’ll get over there as soon as I can,” Thea said, hanging up, grabbing her coat, and racing out of the office.

  The drive to Malton took less than an hour following the A64 through the rolling Yorkshire countryside. Thea hurried through the small hospital up to the ward and then on to a small side room where Sergeant Rankine was waiting for her. He was a small stout man, with thinning red
hair and even redder cheeks. It made him look a little flushed, but the smile was genuine. He was definitely pleased to see her.

  “How do,” he repeated his greeting from the phone call as he offered a hand. She shook it.

  “Where is he?”

  “I’ve got him in a ward on his own. He’s edgy when he’s awake, but he sleeps most of the time. I’ve kept it off the records. What he said, some of the names, I recognised them.”

  “They’re cops?”

  “Yeah, some of them and a couple of other local faces.”

  “You believe him.”

  “It’s a bloody cracking tale if he made it up, and I challenge anyone to go and look at him and not believe he’s been through bloody hell.” Rankine’s voice cracked a little, and Thea wondered why. Was the story that heart-wrenching, or was it pulling at something buried deep in his past? Whatever it was, she knew in an instant that the boy had been lucky to find him. Another officer would have just followed protocol and put the boy in the system. Rankine hadn’t wanted to take that risk. If there was any truth to the story, then that could have put him in real danger.

  “The officers he named, we need them investigated, suspended straight away. If there’s any proof, I want them in a cell.” An obvious move, Thea thought, but one that was going to raise some eyebrows.

  “I can get a call in to Office for Police Conduct, see what they can do,” Rankine said in a tone that suggested he wasn’t really happy with being the one to grass up colleagues but would do it all the same. Thea sympathised with him. It was never easy turning on people you thought you could trust.

  Thea peered through the door into the side room the boy was in. He looked like he was asleep, but she could see already the obvious signs of abuse. His face was drawn, clearly undernourished, and he had visible bruises and cuts to his face.

  “What did the medical report say?” Thea turned back to Rankine.