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  The Anagramist

  A Feyer and Drake Mystery

  David W Robinson

  Copyright © 2020 by David W Robinson

  Cover Photography: Pixabay

  Design by soqoqo

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat Books/darkstroke except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are used fictitiously.

  First Dark Edition, darkstroke, Crooked Cat Books 2020

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  The Author

  David Robinson retired from the rat race after the other rats objected to his participation, and he now lives with his long-suffering wife in sight of the Pennine Moors outside Manchester.

  Best known as the creator of the light-hearted Sanford 3rd Age Club Mysteries, and the cynically humorous Midthorpe Murder Mysteries, he also produces darker, more psychological crime thrillers.

  He, produces his own videos, and can frequently be heard grumbling against the world on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/dwrobinson3 and has a YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/Dwrob96/videos. And for more information you can track him down at https://mysteriesaplenty.blogspot.com/

  By the same author:

  The STAC Mystery series:

  #1 The Filey Connection

  #2 The I-Spy Murders

  #3 A Halloween Homicide

  #4 A Murder for Christmas

  #5 Murder at the Murder Mystery Weekend

  #6 My Deadly Valentine

  #7 The Chocolate Egg Murders

  #8 The Summer Wedding Murder

  #9 Costa del Murder

  #10 Christmas Crackers

  #11 Death in Distribution

  #12 A Killing in the Family

  #13 A Theatrical Murder

  #14 Trial by Fire

  #15 Peril in Palmanova

  #16 The Squire’s Lodge Murders

  #17 Murder at the Treasure Hunt

  #18 A Cornish Killing

  #19 Merry Murders Everyone

  Tales from The Lazy Luncheonette Casebook

  The Midthorpe Murder Mystery series:

  #1 A Case of Missing on Midthorpe

  #2 A Case of Bloodshed in Benidorm

  The Anagramist

  A Feyer and Drake Mystery

  January 13

  Chapter One

  There were times when Shana Kenny wished her parents lived closer to the centre of Howley. The top end of Bradford Hill might be one of the town’s classier areas, but it was a steep climb, especially at half past two in the morning and coming on the back of a Sunday night’s drinking at Benny’s.

  When she gave the matter wider thought, she wished her parents lived somewhere other than Howley. A small town on the edge of the moors, north-west of Leeds, north of Bradford, it was all right as such places went, but it lacked the glamour and glitz of the big cities. Once the pubs shut, there was only really Benny’s. True, there was a casino down by the river’s edge and further out of town, but she wasn’t into gambling. Dancing, drinking, fun; they were her idea of excitement. And anyway, it was well known that Ibbie’s, the name of the casino, was a favourite haunt of the prossies, and if she and her mates went there, most of the men in the place would assume they had a price tag.

  She paused, and perched on the low garden wall of a house on the corner of Bradford Hill Close, one of the little cul-de-sacs which ran off the main road. She wasn’t drunk, but she’d had enough lagers, topped off with a few vodka kicks, to leave her breathless, and she still had half a mile to go.

  Why hadn’t she left herself with enough for a taxi? It was all right for the likes of Noleen. She lived with her parents, too, but they rented a flat on the Cardinal Estate, which was in the bottom of the valley. Even when she was half cut, Noleen could be home in twenty minutes. She wasn’t faced with climbing this bloody great hill.

  Thoughts of her best friend reminded her of why she didn’t have enough for a taxi. Between them, they’d spent all their money on drink.

  Aside from the exhausting walk home, Shana wasn’t bothered about the lack of funds. She had her weekly bus ticket which would take her to college every day during the coming week, and she could always sweet-talk her dad into lending her a few pounds. The thought brought a smile to her lips. Lending, giving, it cost him the same, and he never asked for it back.

  Across the main road was an open area known as Back Field. It wasn’t actually a field, just a large expanse of open ground where rough, moorland grasses grew wild. The children who lived in this area played there, and teenagers went there during the evening and night, for illicit sex. She had her first time in that grass; laid on her back, her underwear cast to one side, and Donny Lister giving her what for. She didn’t enjoy it. She was too sore, and Donny, who was a few years older than her, had drunk too much cider. He took a long time to get off. She’d been with better men since, and although Donny often pestered her for a repeat, she always refused.

  Beyond Back Field, the lights of North Leeds, almost twenty miles away, glowed above the hillsides, and in the inky blackness of the winter sky, only the brighter stars could be seen. But not that many. Turbulent cloud, driven by biting winds swept quickly across the sky blocking most of them out.

  Still for January it had not been too bad. This time of year usually brought the threat of snow and ice, but there had been none so far. It was cold and miserable, sure, but she could cope with rain, and her thick, quilted jacket kept most of the cold at bay.

  Shana was a summer person. She loved the light nights, the long days, passing her time dancing, drinking, getting it on with whoever might be available in Benny’s. Summer gave her the chance to wear shorts and skimpy tops, laze around on the college lawns during her lunch break.

  College. She was due there in less than seven hours, and she had another ten minutes of climbing this hill before she was home. And no way would her dad let her take a day off. That was the trouble when you were the daughter of a self-employed man. He couldn’t take a day off if he wanted, and if he couldn’t, neither could she.

  She detached herself from the garden wall, and turned to walk up the hill.

  She never saw him, never heard him. The first she was aware of anything was a torrent of pain and a thud when the broad blade sank into the middle of her back. She cried out as she dropped to the pavement, one hand stretched out to break her fall, the other automatically reaching behind and up her back to the source of her agony.

  Then came the soft pad of his feet hurrying to her, the pressure of his knee in her back, the rough feel of a woollen balaclava on her cheek and his hot breath in her ear.

  “Be cool, babe, this’ll only take a few seconds.”

  Her confused, tortured mind flooded with horror. He was going to rape her.

  He yanked the knife from her back. It hurt almost as much as its initial strike, but Shana was already too weak, too delirious to scream. She could only gurgle a protest. Blood was already dripping from her mouth.

  And then the blade came round her neck. He yanked her head back and Shana experienced the unbearable torment of the sharpened blade slicing open her throat…

  And then there was nothing.

  ***

  He picked her up, threw her over his shoulder, and with a check both ways to ensure there was no traffic and – more importantly – no witnes
ses, crossed the road into Back Field.

  She was light, easy to carry, even across ten yards of rough ground. It was the way of these modern girls; so heavy that they couldn’t be moved, or so light that they were practically anorexic.

  He dropped her body into the deeper grasses and stood back a moment, admiring his handiwork. She was easy. Most of them would be, but at this hour it was almost too simple. She was tanked up, full of drink, barely aware of who she was, never mind where she was going. The others would be riskier.

  He looked down at the lifeless body. Below the hem of her chunky jacket, the thin, lemon dress had ridden up, bearing her slender legs and thighs, and her plain, white knickers. She’d wet herself. He knew that for a fact. He could smell the ammonia when she sagged over his shoulder. Her bowels had moved, too. Even through the balaclava mask, the stench still filled his nostrils.

  His all-black clothing was spotted with her blood, and like her knickers, it stank of her involuntary evacuation. It was not a problem. He had another complete outfit at home, and this lot could go in the washing machine.

  He made his way back to the corner of Bradford Hill Close, and along the narrow street, where he climbed into his Renault Clio, inserted the key in the ignition, and with a wolfish grin of greedy satisfaction, removed his balaclava.

  One down, four to go.

  Chapter Two

  Sam lay on the bed, her back to the door, facing the wall adjacent to the room’s only window. The curtains were closed but penetrated by shallow, winter daylight, a dull, grey caricature of those glorious summer dawns she loved so much.

  You’ll pay for this, you bitch.

  The roar of his threat echoed around her head, the way it had echoed around the courtroom, the way it had haunted her for the last four months. Well, he was right. She was paying for it. She began paying the moment she first reported him. ‘Traitor’, ‘back-stabber’, ‘turncoat’ even ‘quisling’. That final, pretentious accusation came from one of the older hands, one who should have known better.

  Her rank did not seem to matter. One of the junior officers, some kid barely out of the academy, actually confronted her. “You didn’t have to grass them up. They were only making a bit of pocket money.”

  In an effort to stem the obsessive memories whirling around her head, she glanced at her bedside clock. Just turned eight o’clock. They would be here soon, announcing breakfast, opening the curtains, urging her to move. She didn’t want to move. She never wanted to move.

  Pocket money? That was how the kid saw it. And he wasn’t alone. A good number of the station’s crew, CID and uniformed, were of the same opinion.

  Sam knew different. After the internal investigation into her possible involvement, Professional Standards, working alongside the fraud squad, told her just how much those eight, crooked officers had been making, and it was light years ahead of pocket money. Rumour had it that there was about two million unaccounted for.

  And that was only a guesstimate.

  There was a double knock on the door. It opened, and one of the carers came in. “Morning, Samantha.” She delivered the cheerful greeting as she bustled her way around the bed, and threw back the curtains. “Another miserable day. Drop of snow in the air, I think. Breakfast in ten minutes. Time you were making a move.”

  The same routine every morning. It grated on Sam’s nerves. She yearned to tell the woman to go to hell, but she couldn’t. Breakfast was only served until half past nine. If she missed it, she would get nothing to eat until lunchtime. She had to either leave the comfort of her bed or go hungry.

  Pocket money? At least five people had died, all of them at the hands of Donald Vaughan.

  Protection, drugs, people, and weapons trafficking. No serious police officer would take the risk of involvement in such criminal sidelines for the sake of ‘pocket money’.

  Naturally, she kicked back at that mouthy DC. “I am a detective inspector, and I expect you to treat me with some respect.”

  It made no difference. He, along with all those lined up against her, remained unapologetic, and the situation reached a point where Iris Mullins, the Deputy Chief Constable, ordered her posted to another station. Things were little better there, but Sam had no choice other than to hold herself together. She could fall apart later, but for the time being, her evidence would be crucial in convicting Don Vaughan and his seven cohorts.

  The carer left the room, and Sam dragged herself wearily from the mattress and shuffled to the bathroom. She decided she could not be bothered with a shower, and settled for a wash in the basin.

  The face in the mirror was almost unrecognisable. The sparkling, china blue eyes were empty, devoid of life, the tangled head of straw hair, urgently needed the attention of a hairdresser, the perfect, smiling lips, were turned down, not so much in a grimace, but more resignation, a reluctant acceptance that this was what she had come to. Complete collapse after the trial, total physical and mental exhaustion, and put out to grass in this quiet backwater north of Leeds.

  She was just another casualty of the fallout, every bit as much a victim as the dead men and women, the illegal immigrants selling themselves on the streets or trapped in sweatshops working for pennies, the heroin addicts unable to live without the next fix.

  “We’ll make sure you’re all right, Sam.”

  The words of Iris Mullins after her collapse. Sam offered her resignation, but the DCC would not accept it.

  “We have a duty to look after your health and safety. We can’t attend to your physical and psychological needs if you’re no longer part of the service.”

  Sam did not want the smothering, mothering cosseting, the platitudes of the doctors, nurses and carers. She refused medication, and when one idiot tried to force pills down her throat, she spat them back in his face. When they took sterner action to force drugs into her, she deliberately made herself sick, vomiting them back up before the chemicals could get into her bloodstream.

  “Get away from me. Leave me alone,” she screamed at them.

  Leaving the bathroom, she dressed slowly, mechanically; a pair of jogging pants, a loose-fitting sweatshirt and trainers.

  She stood for a moment at the window, looking out on the grounds. The lawns and flowerbeds were clad in their winter shroud, the grass faded, trees barren, and where the spring and summer would bring a riot of colour, there was only dirty, unkempt earth. There were few birds perched in the trees; pigeons, blackbirds and the occasional magpie, all hanging around in anticipation of the maintenance crew or patients throwing out scraps of food.

  The prosecution counsel had been at pains to point out that she was not obliged to give evidence, but she had insisted. During her fifteen-year career, she might have played with the rules now and again, but she never broke them, and she had always made plain her disapproval of crooked cops.

  The defence – all eight defendants had separate counsel – gave her a rough ride. Don Vaughan repeated his accusation that she was the ringleader, and he was just one of the hitmen. It was the same allegation he’d made during interrogation, the same accusation that prompted an investigation into her.

  She stood up to the harassment, the often veiled, frequently open slights on her character. She remained calm in the witness box, collected, in complete control of herself, and the media, crowding the courtroom in huge numbers, loved her. They lauded her as the glamour girl of British policing, the paradigm which every serving officer in the country should strive to emulate.

  They knew nothing of the turmoil, the internal agony, the mental anguish it had cost her, but when she asked herself would she do it again, the answer was an unequivocal ‘yes’.

  And the hierarchy were determined to capitalise upon her sudden spotlight status. They tempted her. Immediate promotion to Chief Inspector, the promise of a vacancy elsewhere, somewhere where she would lead CID, groom and nurture younger detectives in her virtuous image, that of an honest, hard-working police officer.

  And then came the gold
nugget, the cherry on the icing. Landshaven, Yorkshire’s Premier coastal resort, would soon have such a vacancy. It was hers. All she had to do was say, ‘yes’.

  They knew too much about her. They knew of her lifelong love affair with Landshaven, knew that for her, it would be the dream posting.

  And yet, notwithstanding the pressure coming from Iris Mullins’ office, notwithstanding visits from the woman herself, she refused to commit.

  Memories of the trial rang round her head; an avalanche of images, a cacophony of voices, accusations, counter-accusations, more than one juror complaining of intimidation, and then the judge’s vitriolic summing up, in which he condemned the activities of all eight defendants.

  He meted out sentences ranging from eight to fifteen years, but reserved his most virulent opprobrium for Don Vaughan, describing him as an axis of evil around which the other officers captivated by his almost magnetic personality, turned.

  And Sam knew about that persuasiveness. She had been seduced by it too.

  But no longer.

  He was charged with and found guilty of the same offences as his co-conspirators, and in addition, he was also convicted on five charges of murder, and given a mandatory life sentence with a minimum tariff of twenty-five years.

  He reserved his fury for Sam, pausing as he was led from the dock to begin his sentence, he turned to glower at her. “You’ll pay for this, you bitch. I’ll kill you.”

  She remained unrepentant. To Samantha Vaughan, it made no difference that the ringleader, the man accused of leading a five-year double life as a senior detective on the one hand, and criminal architect of the worst kind on the other, was her husband of eight years.

  Chapter Three