The Playground Murders Read online

  By Lesley Thomson

  Seven Miles from Sydney

  A Kind of Vanishing

  The Detective’s Daughter Series

  The Detective’s Daughter

  Ghost Girl

  The Detective’s Secret

  The House With No Rooms

  The Dog Walker

  The Death Chamber

  The Playground Murders

  The Runaway (A Detective’s Daughter Short Story)

  THE PLAYGROUND MURDERS

  Lesley Thomson

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2019 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Lesley Thomson, 2019

  The moral right of Lesley Thomson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  9 7 5 3 1 2 4 6 8

  A catalogue record for this book is available from

  the British Library.

  ISBN (HB): 9781786697240

  ISBN (XTPB): 9781786697257

  ISBN (E): 9781786697233

  Typeset by Divaddict Publishing Solutions Ltd.

  Jacket design by kid-ethic

  Jacket photography by Shutterstock

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  For Melanie

  Contents

  By Lesley Thomson

  Welcome Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Epilogue

  The Playground Murders

  Acknowledgements

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Prologue

  May 2018

  Rachel Cater parked by the war memorial. She prayed that her mother’s twenty-one-year-old VW Polo would start again. Her plan depended on a swift exit.

  Her mum said never make life-changing decisions in the small hours. Everything looks better in the morning. When Rachel had woken to the alarm, her decision was unchanged.

  Rachel Cater was having an affair with her boss. Chris Philips owned an antiques shop in Cheltenham. On her first day he had promised Rachel that he’d train her to be a dealer. Over a year later, she was still his secretary. But soon they would be married. When Chris left his wife and daughter. This was Rachel’s nocturnal resolution. By his own admission, Chris wasn’t a finisher. She would have to finish it.

  The affair had begun on a Monday (now Rachel loved Mondays, weekends were a desert without Chris). It was five months almost to the day. She’d brought him his coffee (black, two sugars). Suddenly Chris had broken down. He’d held her to him and sobbed his heart out. Rachel’s dream came true.

  He’d told her about his wife Penelope. That he was questioning his feelings for her. Rachel stroked his hair (as soft as she’d imagined) and listened as Chris declared his marriage was over.

  She’d finished it then too. Made him pull himself together, reknotted his tie, smoothed his hair. Handed him a tissue. She’d swept into the main office and informed Ian, Chris’s assistant dealer, and Carol who did the books that Chris and she were visiting a client. ‘My training’s started,’ she’d said.

  ‘What? Wait I’ve got a meeting with him.’ Ian was pissed off that Rachel typed Chris’s letters up before his own.

  ‘Cancelled,’ said Rachel.

  ‘About time.’ Carol was nice, but Rachel knew not to get on the wrong side of her.

  Rachel had driven them to a hotel outside Cheltenham where Chris said he wouldn’t be recognized. He booked a room with his personal AMEX card or Carol would have queried it. The rest, as they say…

  When Rachel told her mum, Agnes Cater said she’d hang fire on the bubbly. Was Chris having his cake and eating it? ‘I’m only worried for you, pet, I don’t want you hurt again.’ Would this latest man of her dreams leave his wife?

  Chris was all over her whenever they were alone. They went to the hotel every week. Rachel insisted on the same room: 245. Nothing special, bland furnishings and décor with those pictures of landscapes intended not to offend rather than to please. For Rachel, room 245 was their bridal suite. Chris fretted that the staff knew them; Rachel was glad. She and Chris were the perfect couple.

  Almost perfect. One thing about Chris was that he was indecisive. It drove Ian and Carol mad. Rachel had been head-girl, she’d won a Duke of Edinburgh award and run the London Marathon. She was a finisher.

  Early closing in Winchcombe. As she’d anticipated, there was no one about. Abbey Terrace was deserted. Frozen, Rachel stamped her feet. The VW’s heater had packed up. When she and Chris were married, she’d have a company car. A Lexus like his wife. Ex-wife. She won’t need it!

  People – her mum’s friends, the doctor – called Rachel a saint for nursing her frail mother. Rachel would shrug. ‘Mum saw me into the world, it’s right I make her last years comfortable.’ Chris loved her for that.

  Rachel didn’t feel saintly. She’d tried to be civil about her rival. But, as days dragged into months, largesse was subsumed by the green-eyed monster. Did they sleep in the same bed? When Penelope Philips rang the office to speak to ‘my husband’, Rachel silently urged Chris to tell her about us. He said he didn’t want to hurt her. She hurt you!

  Rachel wanted Penelope wiped off the face of the earth.

  Chris had advertise
d for another advisor, one who could hit the ground running without training. Rachel’s ‘training’ was in room 245. Rachel was his rock.

  Yesterday she lost it.

  ‘She’s the devil! Don’t feel sorry for her. You’re sitting on a gold mine. Cash it in and live your life.’ Still Chris couldn’t do it.

  She wouldn’t knock. The house would soon be hers. She’d walk in and catch Penelope unawares.

  Christopher Philips’ secretary kept copies of his keys. She knew his greatest secret.

  Mum said you had to be cruel to be kind.

  Chapter One

  November 2018

  Trudy Wates stopped inside Stella’s porch. The front door was ajar. She had two choices. Step away and call Stella – better still the police – or venture inside and check the place herself.

  Since she’d started working as Stella Darnell’s PA a month ago, Trudy knew that she had a hard act to follow. Her predecessor, Jackie Makepeace, had anticipated Stella’s every requirement before Stella realized what she required. Trudy had set about proving herself a match for Jackie (now running Stella’s fledgling detective agency). Trudy intended to exceed expectations.

  Stella would hate to be interrupted while she was deep cleaning for a client. Trudy must present Stella with a problem solved. She tipped open the door with a gloved finger.

  The ground floor – living room and kitchen – appeared untouched. Easy to tell because of course Stella kept her own house as clean and tidy as she did her clients’. Trudy climbed to the half landing.

  The first door was shut. A burglar could be lying in wait.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Trudy had left the front door open so that she could be heard from the street. She was in her forties but went to a boot camp twice a week and walked whenever possible. She carried a penknife, an unwanted present from her husband that, since his death, she treasured. It was her talisman.

  Trudy flung wide the door. No one in the bathroom. One down. Two to go.

  She climbed the stairs to the top landing and approached the room that faced the street. If there was someone in there she would confront them.

  Stella’s bedroom. Her bed was neatly made without a crease. Trudy found no one inside the built-in wardrobe. A lingering whiff of Stella’s perfume was distantly reassuring. She caught herself in triplicate in the three mirrored doors. She looked rigid with tension. Since becoming a widow she had aged years. She gripped the knife and went back along the landing.

  Later, Trudy would tell the police (they sent Chief Superintendent Cashman, presumably because Stella was a copper’s daughter) that the intruders had only been in Stella’s study where they’d tried to steal Stella’s computer and her printer. The monitor lay by the door, wires trailing. Paper files were strewn on the floor. Cashman said that the thieves had been interrupted, perhaps by Trudy parking up (a horrible thought). Trudy told Cashman that Stella would have to confirm what, if anything, had been stolen.

  Trudy had nerved herself to make the call.

  ‘Stella, I’m afraid I have bad news…’

  Later still, Stella would praise Trudy for her swift handling of the situation.

  Trudy sailed through her probation. As she often did, she talked to her dead husband. ‘I will survive.’

  Chapter Two

  December 1980

  ‘Is he dead?’ Lee asked.

  ‘Yeah completely. Look, there’s blood.’ Danielle crouched beside the body. She levered the jaws open with a stick and revealed sharp teeth. Crimson liquid pooled around the tongue.

  ‘Yuk!’ Lee edged back. ‘I don’t think you should do that.’

  ‘It doesn’t hurt.’ Danielle splayed her hand on the body. ‘He’s warm. He died just before we found him. His neck was squashed with a brick. Like this.’ Danielle did a handstand beside the dead body. She flipped onto her feet.

  ‘How do you know?’ Bile rising in his throat, Lee didn’t want to find out.

  ‘I’m a detective.’ Danielle dipped the stick inside the cat’s mouth. She smeared blood on the tarmac.

  ‘Don’t touch it!’ Nicola squeaked.

  ‘It can’t hurt me,’ Danielle reassured them. Nicola hadn’t meant that.

  Danielle shoved the cat’s body with her stick. Blood trickled from between his lips onto the road. ‘Shall I cut it up so we know how it died?’ Buoyed by this idea, Danielle got over her irritation that Nicola was there. A dead body was no different from one that was alive. The cat looked the same. Asleep like Robbie.

  ‘You just said it was with a brick,’ Lee said. ‘If Sarah sees it she’ll have nightmares then Alan will kill me.’

  ‘I still have to do a post-mortem. Like the police did with Robbie. They chopped him up.’ Danielle had forgotten she’d told them about the brick.

  ‘They did not.’ Nicola put her face in her hands.

  ‘They wouldn’t do that to Robbie.’ Lee put his arm around Nicola.

  Leaning into him Nicola said, ‘I think she was run down. Mum says cars go too fast down here. She had a go at your dad the other day, Danni. He was in a sports car. Mum said he stole it.’

  ‘He didn’t.’ Danielle tipped the cat’s hind leg with her stick. Her own mum had accused Eddie of nicking it for his fancy woman. ‘He took me out. It’s an MG.’

  ‘Wow,’ Lee breathed.

  ‘Policemen go faster than my dad. In a panda car with a siren.’

  ‘Nee-nah, nee-nah!’ Chasing about in circles, Jason was a panda car.

  As the light failed the black cat merged with the black tarmac. Danielle told Lee, ‘We have to move it out of the way of cars.’

  ‘Don’t! It’s got germs!’ Nicola tugged Lee’s arm.

  ‘We should go. Else we’ll get the blame.’ Lee dug in his pocket for his lighter. He flicked it on and held it up.

  ‘We should call the police,’ Nicola said. ‘If it was with a brick, that’s murder. A brick wouldn’t move by itself.’

  ‘I’m the police.’ Danielle hadn’t considered this complication. ‘It could have been a car. That’s why I’m going to do the post-mortem.’ The dancing flame lent an infernal aspect to the scene, the children’s faces made demonic.

  ‘What’s that?’ Sarah Ferris was racing Kevin Hood along Braybrook Street. As they reached the cat, the lamp-posts went on.

  ‘Nothing, babes!’ Lee stepped in front of the cat.

  ‘Show me.’ Alan Ferris’s daughter was more than capable of seeing blood without flinching. Sarah gazed at the dead animal. The little girl, eyes wide with curiosity, could have no inkling that very soon her own neck would be compressed by a house brick until she could no longer breathe.

  Danielle grabbed the cat’s tail and dragged it into the gutter.

  The group considered the furry mass. The cat was large with a collapsed tummy.

  ‘I think it’s old,’ Sarah decided. ‘Is it dead like Robbie’s dead?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nicola snapped at her.

  ‘Robbie didn’t get runned down,’ Sarah said.

  ‘No one said he did, darlin’.’ Danielle imitated her older sister Maxine being nice to Jason. ‘Best you go to bed. No nightmares.’ She yanked Sarah to her.

  ‘You can’t chop it up,’ Jason said. ‘It’s not yours.’

  ‘I’m a detective,’ Danielle repeated.

  ‘Can we play Doctors and Nurses with it?’ Sarah enquired.

  ‘It’s dead so it doesn’t need nursing or… doctoring.’ Danielle forgot to be nice.

  ‘Let’s pretend it’s alive. Like you did with Robbie,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Sarah!’ Lee snatched her hand. ‘We’re going. And don’t tell your dad about this, OK?’

  ‘Ouch.’ Sarah squirmed crossly. ‘I want to stay for the chopping.’

  ‘We should tell the owner. They’ll be waiting to give it its tea,’ Nicola said. ‘When Spiderman didn’t come back, Robbie cried. I did too. He’d got stuck in next door’s shed. He was starving. Robbie was allowed to give him Whiskas with a fork.�
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  ‘Robbie’s dead,’ Danielle said.

  ‘He wasn’t then. Spiderman is alive,’ Nicola mumbled.

  ‘Has this cat got a collar?’ Danielle wished Nicky would shove off. She folded her arms.

  Kevin felt under the cat’s chin. Revolted, Jason sniggered. In his doctor’s voice, Kevin reported, ‘She doesn’t have no collar.’

  ‘A collar. Not no collar,’ Danielle barked. ‘You don’t know it’s a lady.’

  ‘It’s had babies, that’s why it’s all flabby like that.’ Kevin did sound like a doctor.

  ‘I know.’ Danielle tapped her front tooth. Her notion of a detective was derived mainly from Scooby-Doo. ‘We’ll call on everyone in the street and detect the owner. Kevin, you’re my sergeant.’

  Kevin scrambled to his feet and stood next to Danielle, hands behind his back like a policeman.

  ‘There’s hundreds of houses in this street,’ Sarah said.

  Everyone went quiet as they digested this.

  ‘Spiderman crosses the road as soon as he comes out,’ Nicola said at last. ‘He goes in a straight line. If this cat does that, it lives there.’ She waved a hand at the house behind them. A decorated Christmas tree sparkled in the window.

  ‘It does live there,’ Danielle stated firmly.

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Nicola asked.

  ‘I keep saying, because I’m a detective. I’ll sling it behind there and people can work it out for themselves.’ Tiring of the operation, Danielle pointed at the memorial for the three dead policemen. She hauled up the cat in both hands. More blood spewed from its mouth. The children scattered like birds.

  ‘Dead! Dead! Dead!’ Jason did a war dance.

  ‘We should tell the owner since you know it’s them in that house,’ Lee stepped in.

  ‘I’ll do it.’ Nicola went up to the house where Danielle had agreed that the cat had lived.

  Sarah dragged on her brother’s Harrington jacket. ‘Lee, I got to tell you a secret.’

  ‘Not now,’ Lee hissed.

  ‘There’s no one in,’ Nicola said.

  ‘Danielle did it.’ Sarah whipped around. Danielle was behind her, cradling the dead cat in her arms. Sarah giggled although it wasn’t funny. She might be six but she knew that she’d made a terrible miscalculation.