Heated Beat 02 - Lucky Man (14 page)

“Your
what
?” Will raised an eyebrow. “When did this happen? Why haven’t I seen this?”

Jack’s face was the picture of innocence. “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

“Bollocks.” Finn kicked Jack under the table. “It’s in the loft. I saw it when I got the Christmas decs down.”

“Shut
up
.”

Karen cackled and snaked an arm around Will’s slim shoulders. “Bigsy and Jack went to that beer festival in Berlin a few summers ago. I think you were doing exams or something. I don’t know what the hell they drank, but they got off the plane dressed as bloody Batman and Robin.”

Bigsy had the good grace to look sheepish. He returned to his seat beside Karen and jerked his head at Jack. “It was his idea.”

“Prove it,” Jack shot back. “I don’t remember a thing. We didn’t even know where we got the costumes from until Finn found the shop receipt under his pillow.”

“Yeah, and I still don’t know what you were doing in my bed.” Finn swiped the last of Jack’s naan bread. He fancied a beer, but he’d had too many dodgy days of late to risk it. “I woke up to find you both on top of me.”

“Daft idiots. You were supposed to fly into Gatwick, not Leeds. You missed my parents’ golden wedding anniversary.” Karen leaned over and whacked Bigsy upside his head.

Bigsy fell off his chair. Finn laughed so hard his ribs ached. As a band they’d had a busy few months, and he’d missed this—spending time with his mates without the pressure of live shows or studio time. The only thing missing was, as ever, Danny, but with a full belly and the warmth of his pseudo-family around him, Finn found it in him to feel hopeful. Danny had promised over and over that the schizophrenia and the bullshit that came with it wouldn’t drive him away. Perhaps it was time Finn believed him.

The doorbell cut through the raucous laughter. Bigsy hauled himself from the floor to answer it. Finn followed him, heading for the bathroom. He had his hand on the door when Bigsy’s exclamation stopped him in his tracks.

“Danny? What’s up, mate? Everything all right?”

Finn spun around, sure he’d misheard, but sure enough there was Danny, standing on Bigsy’s doorstep, his face graver than Finn had ever seen.

Bigsy took a step back. He jerked his head in Finn’s direction. “Come on in. Finn’s around here somewhere.”

Danny shook his head and flashed his ID. “I’m not here for Finn, Bigsy. I’m working. You’re Darren Biggs, right?”

Bigsy opened his mouth. Shut it again. “Er, yeah. Shit. I didn’t know you were a copper.”

“Vice squad,” Danny said. “Can we come in? I need to talk to you about your sister.”

Fuck. For the first time, Finn noticed the flashing lights of a police car and the uniformed officers hovering at Danny’s back. What the hell had Gemma done now? That girl was going to send what remained of Bigsy’s family into an early grave.

Danny stepped into the house. He met Finn’s gaze, briefly, but his expression was unreadable. “Bigsy, where’s your missus, mate?”

“In the kitchen… I….”

“I’ll get her.” Finn shot back to the kitchen and grabbed Karen. The others shot him puzzled looks. “Stay in here,” he said. “The rozzers are here about Gemma.”

Finn escorted Karen to the living room, where Danny and a female police officer had shepherded Bigsy. He started to back away and shut the door behind him.

Bigsy caught his arm. “Stay. This is bad. I can feel it.”

Finn patted Bigsy’s shoulder. He wanted to say something encouraging, but he could feel in his own bones that Bigsy was right.

Danny cleared his throat. “I’m going to call you Bigsy, because that’s how I know you. That okay?”

Bigsy shrugged. “Fine by me. What’s going on, mate? Is Gemma in trouble?”

“First, can you confirm that Gemma Louise Biggs is your sister?”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s her. What’s she done?”

Danny paused, and perhaps Finn was the only one in the room who noticed the brief slip in his composure. “I’m sorry to have to inform you Gemma was found dead last night.”

Silence. Finn was sure his own heart had stopped.

Bigsy swallowed. “What?”

“She’s dead,” Danny said. “A maintenance worker found her body by Junction 25 of the M1.”

“Fuck.” Bigsy paled. Karen squeezed his hand and for a moment he was gone… lost. “How did she die? Was it the drugs?”

“You knew she was using?” Danny caught the gaze of the female officer beside him.

Bigsy nodded. “Yeah. She’s been on junk since she was fifteen.”

“And she was eighteen?”

“
Was?
” Bigsy shook his head. “Fuck me. Was. I can’t believe this shit.”

Danny gave him a minute, looking anywhere but at Finn, then seemed to steel himself. “Were you aware that Gemma was working as a prostitute?”

Karen gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth, but Bigsy just stared… stared hard at Danny, like he could force him to take the words back. “She wouldn’t do that.”

Danny leaned forward. “I’m sorry, mate. I saw her myself. She was living in a squat down Becker Road and calling herself Jade.”

“Jade? What the fuck? That’s our dog’s name.” Bigsy put his head in his hands, and for a long moment, nobody spoke. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece like the menacing beat of an enemy drum, and Finn felt like the world would surely implode and swallow them all up.

“Oh God.” Bigsy sat up. “You found her by the motorway. Fuck, fuck, fuck. How did she die? Was it him? Did he get her?”

The words meant nothing to Finn, but in that moment, he knew they meant everything to Danny.

“We don’t know anything for sure right now,” Danny said. “I need you to ignore what you’ve seen in the media and wait for the postmortem.”

“Bollocks.” Bigsy stood, shoving Karen off him like a ragdoll. “You already know, don’t you? That sick fuck serial killer has murdered my sister.”

Finn’s heart dropped through the floor. He took a breath that lodged in his throat and wouldn’t budge. Danny glanced at him like he knew, and Finn’s hands twitched. He looked away.
Get a grip, dammit. This isn’t about you.

Danny got up and walked to the window where Bigsy had drifted. He spoke in a voice low enough for only Bigsy to hear. Finn crouched by the sofa and put his hand on Karen’s knee. “You okay?”

Karen blew out a breath. “Bloody hell. That girl was always going to die young, but this?” She shook her head. “She deserved better than this. They all did.”

Finn didn’t know what to say. Bigsy’s family had been through hell three times over with the loss of first their father in the Falklands, then their mother a few years back. Gemma had been in trouble for years and the ending had always seemed inevitable, but now it was here it felt so fucking cruel.

Bigsy appeared beside them. He looked a little calmer, though his ashen skin gave him away. “I need to go with the coppers and formally identify the body.”

“I’ll go with you,” Karen said.

“No. I’ll be all right, love. I need to do this by myself.”

“You should get changed, at least.” Karen touched the Batman costume. “Come on. I’ll get your jeans out of the dryer.”

Karen pulled a dazed Bigsy from the room. It took Finn a few moments to realize he was alone with Danny in perhaps the strangest circumstances he could ever imagine.

Danny grasped Finn’s shoulder and pulled him to his feet. “You okay?”

“Me? God. This is crazy. Is this…. Gemma? Is she your case?”

“One of them.”

“How many others?”

“Gemma was the fourth.”

“I had no idea. I mean… I saw something on the news last week, but I never thought….” Finn stopped. “Is this why you’ve been so distracted?”

“I’d imagine so.” Danny tried a smile. Failed. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I just—”

“It’s okay,” Finn said. “I should’ve figured there was more going on than the shit in my own head.”

Danny gripped Finn’s arm. “Don’t do that. I’ve told you already, a thousand times, none of that is gonna drive me away, okay? I just need to deal with this. People are getting killed on my watch. I can’t do anything until we’ve caught the bastard.”

“You need to catch him, Danny. Bigsy will lose his bloody mind if you don’t. He’s been through enough.”

“Did you know her?”

“Gemma? No, not really. She’s always been around, but she’s… she was like a ghost, you know? Thinner and paler every time I saw her.”

“How often did you see her?”

Finn raised an eyebrow. “Are you asking officially?”

“Not yet, but anything you can tell me will help and give me less reason to hassle Bigsy.”

That was good enough for Finn. “Gemma’s been trouble since Bigsy’s parents died.”

“Their mother died a few years ago?”

“Right. Six… maybe seven years ago. Breast cancer. Gemma went off the rails pretty soon after. She ran off with some no-good bloke when she was fifteen. She never really came back.”

Danny nodded. Finn could see him adding it all to what Bigsy had already told him and coming up with a picture too awful for Finn to comprehend.

“She wasn’t always a mess, though. I met her when she was fourteen, and she was probably the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”

Danny smiled sadly. “I saw her a few weeks ago, and she was still beautiful. Listen. I’ve got to go. Are you okay?”

“Me? Shit. Yeah. I’m all right. It’s just a shock. I can’t, fuck…. Bigsy. I can’t imagine how he’s feeling.”

“I know.” Danny released Finn’s arm and started to turn away.

Finn stopped him. “Danny?”

“Yeah?”

Please don’t go.
“Be careful out there.”

Chapter Twelve

L
OUD
,
INSISTENT
banging woke Danny from his uncomfortable sleep on the couch. He rolled off and hit the floor with a dull thud. Shit. He’d passed out in his clothes. The banging came again. He scrambled to his feet, shucked his coat, and started for the front door. On the way he tripped over the bag of takeaway food he’d forgotten to eat. Cold kebab, anyone?

Nice.

Danny threw open his front door. His old mate Kev glared back at him.

“Finally. Don’t you answer your bloody phone anymore?”

“What?” Danny looked around for his phone. Recently it had seemed glued to his ear. “When did you call me?”

“I’ve been calling you all feckin’ morning. You have a visitor at my place. Seems you forgot to tell your baby sister you moved.”

Danny flicked his gaze rapidly between Kev and his phone screen, unsure he’d heard him right, but the six missed calls from Kev was a bit of a giveaway. “Sara’s in Nottingham?”

“Yep. Spent the night in your old room. Where the fuck have you been?”

“Working.” Danny rubbed his face and looked around for something, anything, to wake him up.

“On the serial-killer thing?”

“What do you think?”

Kev grunted. “Figured as much. Haven’t seen you around lately.”

Danny let that one go. “What’s Sara doing here? Why didn’t she call me?”

“I don’t bloody know. She didn’t seem too happy to find you’d moved out, though. Why didn’t you tell her?”

“I did. At least I told my mum.” And then it clicked into place. Danny’s mother had always disparaged the pedestal Danny’s younger sister had put him on, and with more than a decade between the two siblings, it hadn’t been hard to push them apart. Danny hadn’t seen Sara in months, and even then it had been a snatched cup of coffee in Leeds. “Is she still at your place?”

“No, she’s in the car. Figured I’d check you were decent before I sent her up.”

Danny glared, though given the state of his neglected flat, he was glad Kev had been so considerate. He chucked his abandoned dinner in the bin. “I’d better go down and get her.”

“Don’t bother,” Kev said. “Jump in the shower. I’ll send her up.”

Danny did just that. He turned the water as hot as he dared and tried to calm his exploding brain. He was halfway through another twenty-four-hour mandatory downtime, but in reality he’d worked every hour he’d been awake since he’d discovered the true identity of the fourth girl. He hadn’t had the balls to tell Bigsy his sister had been snatched from the streets right under his nose, but fuck, Danny couldn’t get it out of his head. He’d known Gemma was at risk the moment he’d laid eyes on her, and he’d left her out there. Left her to die, and lie, undiscovered, for more than a week.

Stop it.

Jen Lanes’s voice cut through the chaos. Danny had spent a long afternoon with her researching convicted offenders in the local area, particularly those with a history of violence against women, and, as ever, she’d proved the voice of reason.

Every girl out there is at risk. All we can do is catch the bastard.

And bloody hell, they’d tried. Together they’d scrutinized each victim and scene over and over. Made notes of the patterns and anomalies and circled the subtle signs the killer was becoming more careless… reckless, until it almost felt like the killer
wanted
to be caught and they were just too stupid to catch him.

“Danny! Get your fucking arse out here.”

Danny shut the shower off, dried, and tied a towel around his waist. The indignant face of his beautiful younger sister greeted him when he opened the bathroom door, and he blinked. Saw Jade… Gemma’s face, like he had done so often since he’d been called to her rudimentary grave.

“Earth to Danny?”

Danny forced a grin and pushed past Sara’s slender frame. “Yeah, yeah. What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Nice. Do you kiss all the boys with that mouth?”

Danny threw a startled glance over his shoulder. As a rule, blood relatives never mentioned his sexuality. He grabbed some clothes from the wardrobe and absently pulled them on. Scruffy jeans. Finn’s Stone Roses T-shirt. How had that ended up here? “Do Mum and Dad know where you are?”

“They do, actually. Mum rang me, ranting that you’d stopped answering her e-mails. I told her you were busy and we were spending Christmas together up here, so technically I’m here to protect you.”

Christmas. Fuck. It was bloody Christmas Eve and Danny hadn’t even noticed. “I never answer Mum’s e-mails. They go to my junk box.”