The DI Jake Sawyer Series Box Set Read online

  Jake Sawyer Box-Set 1-3

  Andrew Lowe

  Contents

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  1. CREEPY CRAWLY

  2. STRONGER THAN DEATH

  3. THE DYING LIGHT

  PRAY FOR RAIN (BOOK FOUR)

  Acknowledgments

  Glossary

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  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: 978-1-9997290-7-3

  For Tom and Josh

  I am not afraid. I was born to do this.

  Joan of Arc

  Prologue

  He stirs. He’s on his back. Hard surface. He opens his eyes, but the darkness is complete, smothering. He wants to move, to find a light source. He wills his arm to raise and fumble to the side, to search for a switch, a lamp, anything. But his arm only twitches; he can visualise the action, the fingers finding a button, but he can’t turn the abstract idea into physical movement. It’s as if the neural pathway from brain to muscle is clogged, closed off.

  Maybe it’s sleep paralysis? Scary, but he’s heard it passes in a few seconds.

  He can’t fully open his eyes; the eyelids feel gummed and leaden. He can just about prise them apart, but he has to strain to keep them open.

  Not that there’s anything to see. No shapes are forming through his flickering lashes. The blackness is encloaking: empty and abysmal.

  His breathing is tight, clipped. He struggles to expand his diaphragm beyond a short catch of oxygen before it contracts again. If he could move his neck, if he could glance down, he wouldn’t be surprised to see a boa constrictor coiled tight around his chest, reflexively reacting to his attempts to breathe, squeezing and restricting the range of his lungs.

  When he does manage to take in air, it’s dense, with an earthy essence.

  The paralysis isn’t passing, and now the panic begins to trickle into his veins. He tries to ball his fists, wiggle his toes, raise his eyebrows. Nothing.

  Movement! His body slides over to the right, stopped by a solid surface. A wall? And then over to the left. Another surface. He slips backwards, the top of his head clunking into another upright surface just behind.

  And with a terrible epiphany, the panic rears up.

  He is not dreaming. He is not still half asleep.

  He is awake and aware, and he is inside some kind of box.

  His head is pressed against the top side, taking the weight of the rest of his body, crumpling his neck. But he feels nothing.

  The box is dragged along for a few seconds, then lowered level.

  He can hear grunting outside. One male.

  Footsteps.

  Crunching. Moving around the box, from bottom to top. Then another tilt, a drag and a jolt as he falls, maybe a few feet. His head lurches up into the lid and then, on landing, snaps back.

  Still, the paralysis doesn’t pass, and now he tries to speak, to shout, to scream. But his vocal cords are frozen.

  Something lands on the box, above his head. The impact has weight, but the object doesn’t feel solid or singular. There’s a thud, followed by a fading aftershock. A scattering. The sound is repeated every few seconds.

  Now his oxygen-starved brain reaches back. He remembers the golf course, the moonlit car park, the twist of the ignition key, the movement in the rear view mirror.

  The panic in his blood tingles and begins to soften, spreading and soothing like anaesthetic. Sealing his eyes.

  The camera lens looks on.

  Observing. Preserving.

  Part I

  A NORTHERN SOUL

  1

  ‘Don’t call me a bitch!’

  The man leaned forward, nose to nose with the woman. She turned to the side. He grabbed her chin and jerked her head back to face him. ‘You don’t get to tell me what I get to call you. You get me?’

  The 14.58 from London to Sheffield burrowed through the clutter of Kettering. It was usually a placid affair: half-day commuters hypnotised by screens, grazing on late lunches, peering out at the drowsy flatlands of Bedfordshire, braced for the surge and trundle into the Midlands and the English North beyond.

  ‘What do you think I am, yeah? What do you fucking see?’

  Today, though, there was a sideshow. Not that anyone was watching, or at least making it obvious they were watching.

  The couple sat opposite each other at a table seat. He was big and wide, padded by a grubby green hoody. The hood fabric gathered at the base of his neck, mirroring the rolls of stubbly fat which propped up his bowling ball head: shorn, shiny, scarlet with fury.

  She was small and slender, with straw-blonde hair scrunched into a cluster at the top of her scalp: more stalk than ponytail. She winced as he berated her, flinching at each prod of his plump forefinger.

  The mismatch was jarring. He was an ogre: vast and primal, semi-evolved. She was a tainted jewel: smeared and mishandled but somehow still shining.

  While he roared and ranted, her silence was eloquent.

  As he forced her to face him, she dropped her gaze.

  ‘Look at me when I’m talking to you!’

  He jammed a meaty fist under her jaw and jerked her head up. She squeezed her eyes shut. Mascara-streaked tears stained her cheeks.

  ‘You think I’m a mug? Do I look like a fucking mug to you? Is that it?’

  The fields scrolled faster past the windows, and the passengers bedded deeper into their distractions. An elderly woman slipped out of her seat and hobbled down the aisle, away from the couple. She passed through the adjoining doors and disappeared into the next carriage.

  ‘Open your fucking eyes and take a look.’ He spread his arms, low and wide. ‘What do you see, eh? What do you see?’

  ‘I see a bully.’

  The voice was male. Deep, steady. Lightly accented Southern English but with a languid, Northern edge to the vowels. The big man turned towards its source.

  The speaker was seated a few rows down, by the window at a table, opposite another passenger in the aisle seat, who now sunk further behind his Telegraph. He had his back to the big man, with his head tilted towards the window, as if in reverie, admiring the view. His scruffy black hair tickled the collar of a dark orange padded jacket. The Telegraph passenger’s section of the table was clear, but his side was scattered with items: iPad, smartphone, headphones, a packet of shortbread biscuits split open as if to share, Starbucks takeaway cup, a couple of paperbacks, notepad and pen, a copy of Viz. He was slouched, with his legs stretched underneath the table. A sharp observer would have noticed a small albino patch of hair at the crown of
his head.

  The big man wriggled out of the table seat. ‘What did you just say?’

  He strutted over to the man in the orange jacket and loomed in the aisle, shoulders heaving in outrage. Out in the open, he seemed freakishly tall, built like a cruiserweight, with long, worked-out arms.

  He gripped the edge of the table with both mitts and leaned down. ‘I’m talking to you.’

  The man in the orange jacket didn’t turn. ‘I said, “I see a bully”. I see a bully who thinks that abusing a woman in public makes him look tough and big, but actually it makes him look weak and small.’

  Now he turned. He was mid-thirties, with glinting green eyes set beneath defined brows. As he looked up at his aggressor, he curled one side of his mouth into a smile, activating a deep dimple in his right cheek.

  He lifted his eyebrows for emphasis, drew in a deep breath through his nose. ‘So you should stop now, while you just look like a bully. Because the more you keep talking, the more you look like a coward.’

  The big man squinted and glanced round at the nearby passengers, perhaps to check their reaction; to confirm this was really happening. No takers.

  He shifted his arms around behind his back and clasped his hands together.

  The orange-jacketed man held his smile.

  The big man leaned down to the side of his head, inches from the dimple. ‘And what happens after that? After I stop talking?’

  The smile faded. The green eyes shifted a little, reflecting more steel. They fixed on the centre of the big man’s glare. ‘You’ll probably take a swing at me or something. And that will complete your journey from bully to coward to idiot.’

  The big man scoffed: an instinctive splutter of confusion. He styled it into an ugly laugh. ‘So you think I’m an idiot, yeah? Is that right?’

  ‘Not yet, perhaps. But you’re getting there.’ The smile was history now, replaced with a calm, even stare that seemed to bore through the big man’s skull.

  The big man ramped up the laugh. It sounded glazed and phoney: an am-dram approximation of a supervillain. ‘Well, let’s say that’s right, yeah? Let’s say I’m a bully and a coward and an idiot. But do you know what you are? Eh?’

  The green eyes didn’t flicker. ‘A dead man?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Too quick. The response had more of an air of the playground than the boxing ring. The big man pushed his face in closer, holding eye contact.

  The man in the orange jacket smiled again and reached for his coffee.

  ‘Carl!’ The woman was up now, out in the aisle. She leaned on the table, keeping her distance. ‘Leave it, babe.’

  ‘Sit down and shut the fuck up.’

  The elderly woman re-entered the carriage with a uniformed train guard.

  The orange-jacketed man sipped at his coffee. He caught the terrified eyes of the passenger opposite, over the top of his Telegraph. ‘Listen, Carl.’ He set down the cup and sat back. ‘You’ll love this. Human beings are what’s called “deuterostomes”. In the womb, the anus forms before any other opening, see? What that means is there’s a point in all of our growth when we’re nothing but arseholes. And some people don’t seem to develop beyond that stage.’

  Carl frowned, absorbing the implications, digesting the insult. His boorish eyes sunk back into their sockets. He seemed confused and, for the first time, concerned. ‘You’re fucking mental, mate. There’s something wrong with you.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ The guard reached them; he was short but sturdy. He clocked the stand-off, caught the imploring looks of the surrounding passengers. ‘I’ve had a complaint about conduct in this carriage. Is there a problem here?’

  The man in the orange jacket shuffled out of his seat and stood in the aisle, next to Carl but facing the guard. He was surprisingly tall, with a broad chest and shoulders. ‘No problem at all. Apologies if there’s been any misunderstanding.’

  The guard looked doubtful. He tilted back his head and caught Carl’s eye. ‘Everything okay with you, sir?’

  Carl offered a slow nod and a grunted, ‘Uhuh.’ He quivered with barely suppressed rage and couldn’t resist turning his eyes back to the man in the orange jacket.

  A silence hung heavy.

  ‘There is a problem, actually.’ Perhaps emboldened by the presence of uniformed authority, the Telegraph man lowered his newspaper shield and found his voice. ‘They were threatening each other. It is unacceptable.’ He flapped the paper back into place and pretended to read, shaking his head.

  The guard sucked in a breath. ‘Look. We’re about fifteen minutes from Leicester.’ His accent was Midlands, maybe Birmingham; too chummy and musical to carry any real threat. ‘I can hold the train, speak to the Transport Police and have you both thrown off. Whatever this is, you can sort it out somewhere else. And you’ll need to buy another ticket.’

  The orange-jacketed man shook his head. ‘That won’t be necessary.’ It wasn’t conciliatory; it was a statement of fact.

  The guard caught the tone and took exception. ‘Can I see your tickets and ID, please?’

  Carl took out his ticket and wallet. The guard checked them and handed them back.

  The man in the orange jacket produced his ticket and a police warrant card. The guard leaned in and studied it, reading aloud.

  ‘Jake Sawyer. Detective Inspector.’

  Down came The Telegraph.

  Carl took a step away, the colour draining from his face.

  Sawyer smiled, giving him the dimple. ‘It’s okay. I’m off duty.’

  2

  Maggie Spark settled into her consulting chair, as Desmond paced. They were three sessions in; she had given up trying to get him to sit towards the end of the first session. Early on, the aim was to get to a place where the client-patient barrier was at its thinnest, and there was freedom to unload without fear of judgement. For some, it was enough to assume the classical position: supine on the chocolate brown Heal’s futon, addressing the ceiling. Others, like Desmond, required a more creative solution. He was a riffer, a freewheeler. He liked to move around the room, perching and squatting, as if constantly pursued by his troubles.

  Desmond paused at the window to take in the rugged sprawl of luminous pastures. The landscape rippled and rose to a gritstone ridge where the rocks of the Staffordshire Roaches stood like sentinels, guarding the Southwestern entrance to the Peak District. Summer was in retreat, and the purple rashes of heather were smothering the thinning moorland. The local hamlets now hosted only the hardiest tourists, but Maggie had noticed no decline in the pimples of red and green climbers dotted across the face of Ramshaw Rocks.

  Desmond sucked in a breath and released it slowly, through pursed lips. ‘It’s so beautiful. You’re very lucky.’ He turned, resumed pacing. ‘Have you always lived here?’

  Maggie smiled and ran a palm across the creamy paper of her notebook. She was short and slight, swallowed by the padded chair. She wore her rust red hair in a rigid bob: fashionably unfashionable. The tips curled around her jawline, underscoring an oval face illuminated by owlish hazel eyes.

  ‘I grew up nearby, in Leek. My parents moved abroad and left me the house. I sold it and bought this place with my partner.’

  Desmond stopped and gazed down at the glossy parquet floor, nodding. He dropped onto the futon. ‘I read there were wallabies.’

  ‘There used to be. They released them from a private zoo sometime in the 1940s, I think. People still claim to see them from time to time.’

  As a child, Maggie often passed through the Roaches on Sunday drives, entombed in the back of a smoke-filled Austin Allegro, windows up. She was always on gate duty, and she cherished the regular chances to escape the car and feast on the peaty air. As she clunked open the clasp and the car juddered over the cattle grid, she would scan the bluebells and gorse blossom, hoping to catch sight of a wallaby, but only ever spotted pheasant, grouse, the odd mountain hare.

  ‘How are you sleeping, Desmond? What are your patterns now? It’s a couple of mo
nths since the incident.’

  He shuffled to the edge of his seat, slumped forward, elbows on knees. ‘It’s a bit better. But I still keep seeing it. Seeing the faces and hearing the screams. It replays, like a film in my head. Over and over. When the panic comes, it feels like it’s there in front of me, happening all over again.’

  Maggie scratched out a note. She looked up, hoping to coax Desmond into meeting her gaze. ‘It’s helpful to demystify trauma, to see it as a natural biological process. When traumatic events occur, the body’s coping mechanisms can be overwhelmed, and so the memory is inadequately processed and stored in an isolated part of the brain. The reason the memory feels as real as the event is because your brain still needs to digest it. Think of it as a blockage in the system. We’re going to develop a unique coping mechanism to address the past, present and future of the stored memory. I’m going to ask you to complete a few exercises in time for our session next week.’

  Desmond looked up, catching her eye for the first time since the session began, half an hour earlier. ‘I read this thing online.’

  A therapist’s five most hated words. She braced.

  ‘It said that there are plenty of ways to “change the script”. That people establish the future of an action in their minds, and if you can disrupt it, you can derail them, make them rethink what they’re doing. Maybe it’s the same with traumatic memories?’