The Dying Light Read online

  The Dying Light

  DI Jake Sawyer Book Three

  Andrew Lowe

  Contents

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  Prologue

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  PART TWO

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  (Blank)

  Coming Soon

  Glossary

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  Acknowledgments

  Please leave a review

  Creepy Crawly

  Stronger Than Death

  Don’t You Want Me?

  Savages

  The Ghost

  Three Tense Tales

  About the Author

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  Details can be found at the end of this book.

  Copyright © 2019 by Andrew Lowe

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: andrewlowewriter.com

  Twitter: @andylowe99

  First published in 2019 by Redpoint Books

  Cover photographs © Shutterstock

  ISBN: 978-1-9997290-6-6

  For Tom and Josh

  Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!

  William Golding, Lord of the Flies

  Prologue

  The girl swished through a patch of long grass and dropped to her knees in the shadow of a tall perimeter hedge. She was nine, maybe ten, with long brown hair gathered in the fur-lined hood of a pear-green winter parka.

  She dug into the cold earth with chewed-down fingernails and raised a few chunks of soil, petrified by the morning frost. She had been promised snow, but had woken only to a brief swirl of hail as it scattered over the bedroom window.

  She looked back at the building: a vast three-storey farmhouse set at the end of a broad driveway. The front lawn was open to the elements, with a high fence and road entrance sealed by a pair of wrought iron gates. But here in the sheltered back garden, the plants craned for their morning flare of filtered sunshine, and sulked in the shade for the rest of the day.

  The girl swept the soil from her hands and peeked through the gap in the hedge. She had been working on it for five days now: unpicking the branches, blunting the hawthorn, folding the leaves back into place to retain an illusion of density. She squinted at the empty meadows, crusted white by frozen dew. The ground dipped away to the horizon, swallowed by a grove of evergreens, swaying in the half-light.

  The side door opened and shut, and the girl scrabbled backwards, away from the gap. A short, sunken woman appeared at the edge of the garden and pulled on a black woollen hat and a pair of yellow gloves. She smiled and hobbled down a stone staircase, her face misted behind vapours of laboured breath.

  ‘Come on, love. It’s a cold one today. Best be inside.’

  The girl cast her wide blue eyes up at the woman. ‘Can I please stay out for a bit? I don’t feel very well. Fresh air is nice.’

  The woman tilted her head. She was in her mid-sixties; a little hefty but well preserved, with the hint of a sparkle in her narrowed eyes. ‘Okay, then. But stay close, remember?’ She turned and hauled herself back up to the house, glancing behind as she re-entered through the side door.

  The girl shuffled back to the gap. She reached down her leg and rolled back the fabric of her jeans. The metal collar was locked tight around her ankle, with only the slightest gap for circulation. She brushed her fingertips over the rough metal and gazed out at the field beyond.

  How long to the trees? A few minutes of sprinting?

  But what was beyond them? If she could make it, maybe she could stay hidden in the forest, find her way to a road.

  Cars, people.

  Her breath came in short bursts now. Panting. Her heart beating hard and fast.

  A quick look back at the house.

  All quiet.

  She reached forward and prised open the gap, shouldering her way through the hedge and into the weeds at the fringe of the field.

  She stumbled, rose up and ran, out across the open grass. A lateral blast of wind staggered her, but she leaned into it and kept her aim, charging for the trees.

  A jolt of pain, surging up from her feet, ripping through her core, flashing outwards to her fingertips. A vibration, rattling her teeth and bones. A buzzing sound in her ears.

  Her whole body stiffened, and her view of the treeline switched to the dirty white sky, as her head was yanked back by some unseen force.

  The buzzing and vibration stopped and she tilted, no longer in control of her legs. The ground was cold and brittle, and she dragged her arms forward, trying to push herself back onto her feet.

  Another jolt. More vibration. All ambient sound shut out by the buzzing. Her limbs tensed again: joints frozen, suspended. She willed herself on, but her body wouldn’t comply.

  The sound cut out, and her body relaxed. But she was exhausted now. Face down, flat out.

  A shout. The woman, somewhere back near the house.

  A male voice in response.

  Crunching behind.

  The girl twisted her head round and saw the man approach. He adjusted something on a handheld device and slipped it into the inside pocket of a dark-brown leather jacket. He loomed over her: tall and slender, struggling to stay upright in the wind.

  He dipped hi
s head and studied her. There was hurt in his eyes. Disappointment.

  He scooped up the girl and turned back towards the house.

  PART ONE

  MADE OF STONE

  1

  Jake Sawyer stepped out of the main doors of Greater Manchester Police HQ. In a single motion, he spun his jacket around over his head, twisting it and slotting in his arms, then shrugged it over his shoulders and headed for the car parked over the road.

  He was a tall man: broad shouldered, long armed, with a lope to his walk that never quite slipped into a swagger. His black hair was cropped tight, and he had trimmed his beard down to a shadow, pruning a couple of years off his thirty-six. His long jacket flapped in the icy wind, and he kept his keen green eyes on the driver as he approached the car. He blew into his hands, opened the door, and flopped into the passenger seat.

  In the back, two young children wore wireless headphones and stared into the screen of a seat-mounted iPad. Maggie Spark started the engine but didn’t move off. She kept her eyes on Sawyer, as he tilted his head and rested it on the window. Maggie was slight and compact: around Sawyer’s age, with shoulder-length rust red hair and enquiring hazel eyes. She was dressed down for the occasion: wash-day jeans, comfort jumper.

  At last, Sawyer shifted his eyes to her. ‘Thanks.’

  She pointed to the cup holder. ‘There’s a latte. Might be a bit tepid. Sugar’s in the glovebox. And a pastry. Chocolate.’

  Sawyer squeezed out a lopsided smile, dimpling his right cheek. He switched his gaze to the windscreen and Maggie steered the car onto Northampton Road, away from the bland business park, with its permanent parade of evenly spaced, manicured trees; more North Korean than northern England. She threaded through the back streets of Newton Heath, past the ugly wholesalers and shuttered pubs. Sawyer didn’t take the coffee or look for the pastry; he just sat there, eyes front.

  Maggie glanced back at Mia and Freddy, lost to Incredibles 2. She slowed for a gridlock outside Asda. ‘Have you eaten?’

  Sawyer shifted in his seat. ‘Partially defrosted lasagne.’

  ‘No special treatment for Detective Inspectors, then?’

  He shook his head. ‘Well. The common lags get Tesco Dinner For One. Pretty sure mine was Waitrose.’ His voice was soft, muffled by the strain, but still clear. The vowels were extended: northern, with a twist of London.

  Maggie hustled through the late-afternoon traffic, following the signs for the M67: the escape route from the urban squall to the relative peace of the Peak District National Park. It would be a long, tense hour, unless she could draw him out. But after ten years as a counsellor, she had honed her technique with the cold starters. ‘Remember when we were at Keele, Jake? Your battered old Fight Club VHS? Your housemates hated it, and it was your way of clearing them out when I came round. I hated it, too, at first, but you won me over. Wore me down, actually.’

  Another dimpled smile. Warmer, this time.

  ‘Remember that line from the film? “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.” It fits with your Stoicism. You can’t control what’s happened to you, but you can choose how to react, what steps to take to rebuild.”

  Sawyer let his head drop against the window again. ‘Are you okay with it?’

  ‘What’s “it”?’

  ‘Your separation. You mentioned it over breakfast.’

  ‘Three days ago, yes.’ She sighed. ‘It’s ran its course. Better to get out while we’re still friendly.’

  Sawyer took out his phone. ‘What’s Justin doing now?’

  ‘He’s a partner, at his Stockport firm. His mother lives there. He’s staying with her while he finds a place.’

  He nodded to the back seat. ‘Kids know?’

  Maggie lowered her voice, despite the headphones. ‘Sort of. It’ll be hardest for Freddy. I’m just telling him that his dad’s very busy at the moment. Mia’s a mummy’s girl. And she’s older, more mature.’

  Sawyer scrolled through the stories in his news app. ‘Sorry to hear.’

  She stopped for a red light and studied him. ‘Jake. You do have a way of confounding my expectations. Usually when I start to relax and think that things are going right for a change.’

  ‘You mean the getting arrested for murder thing?’

  The car behind honked its horn; the light had changed. She moved off. ‘Yes. That certainly raises the bar. Extreme, even by your standards.’

  Sawyer opened a local story.

  POLICE STEP UP HUNT FOR MISSING GIRL

  ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about. I posed as a journalist to get close to Marcus Klein, the man who was wrongly convicted of murdering my mother thirty years ago. I used him for leverage to get the name of the person I believe actually did it. But then he was killed, probably by the same person. And now I’ve been framed for his murder.’

  Derbyshire police issued a new appeal today in the case of Holly Chilton, the ten-year-old girl reported missing by her family over a week ago.

  He held up the phone. ‘You seen this?’

  Maggie ran a hand across the back of her neck. ‘So, what now?’

  ‘Keating handed me over to Manchester police. They questioned me. Not very well. Held me for two days. They must have got an extension on the standard twenty-four hours, so I assume there was a tussle about charging me. CPS demanding more evidence. They don’t like to bin off one of their own unless there’s a really good chance of getting a result.’

  Hundreds of people have been involved in searches to find Holly, who was last seen on Monday near Hartington.

  ‘And you’re suspended, right?’

  He glanced over. ‘Right. I’m out on bail, pending charge. No warrant card. Suspended with pay. They’ll have searched my house and, because they haven’t charged me already, I assume they didn’t find much.’

  ‘And what are your conditions?’

  In an emotional video appeal, Holly’s parents, James and Sara, pleaded with anyone who might have seen something, or who might have information relating to Holly’s whereabouts, to come forward and speak to the police in confidence.

  ‘Surrendered my passport, and I have to stay out of range of Klein’s brother’s house. Oh, and I’m required to sign in at my own station twice a week.’ He pocketed the phone and looked over. ‘Awkward.’

  2

  At Sawyer’s cottage on the edge of Edale, Maggie parked in front of the orange-and-black Mini Convertible. Sawyer got out and let himself into the house.

  She turned to the children and they lifted their headphones. ‘Do you want to stay here or come inside?’

  ‘Stay here!’ In unison.

  ‘How long for the film?’

  ‘Ten minutes,’ said Mia. She waited for Freddy to replace his headphones. ‘Is Uncle Jake okay?’

  Maggie patted Mia’s wrist. ‘He’ll be fine. I won’t be long. Don’t talk to any strange men.’ Mia rolled her eyes and replaced her headphones.

  Maggie followed Sawyer inside the low-beamed, L-shaped sitting room. It was her first visit, and she was surprised by the tidiness. A bookshelf with a section reserved for neatly packed DVDs, PS4 and games was tucked under the small TV. The galley kitchen was spotless, with an empty dishrack, nested chopping boards, gleaming surfaces. It was a gloomy morning, and Sawyer had switched on the overhead light, revealing a side door leading to an unloved patio and picnic bench. There was a faint tang of cleaning chemical.

  She crouched by the DVDs. Mostly blokey, with a couple of sports titles and natural history box sets. ‘You still watch these?’

  Sawyer looked over from the kettle. ‘Yeah. Streaming services are patchy. And things disappear because of rights issues. You don’t come home and find one of your DVDs missing. Tea?’

  Maggie shook her head. ‘Got to go.’

  Sawyer opened a cupboard and pulled out an opened packet of biscuits, twisted shut. He approached Maggie, held eye contact for a second, then waved the biscuits at her.
r />   She shook her head, and ran a finger over the dining table. It came up clean. ‘Now this is special treatment. They wouldn’t make it so nice for a civilian.’

  Sawyer nodded to the floorboards. ‘Sally’s team, I’ll bet. Hard to tell, but I think they’ve stuck the Hoover round. Pretty good, considering I don’t have one.’ He walked back to the kitchen.

  Maggie gulped in a breath and winced at the lungful of soapy air. ‘I spoke to Shepherd. He fed your cat.’