Something Buried: An absolutely gripping mystery thriller Read online

  Something Buried

  An absolutely gripping mystery thriller

  Kerry Wilkinson

  Books by Kerry Wilkinson

  Standalone novels

  TEN BIRTHDAYS

  TWO SISTERS

  THE GIRL WHO CAME BACK

  LAST NIGHT

  THE DEATH AND LIFE OF ELEANOR PARKER

  THE WIFE’S SECRET

  The Jessica Daniel series

  THE KILLER INSIDE (also known as LOCKED IN)

  VIGILANTE

  THE WOMAN IN BLACK

  THINK OF THE CHILDREN

  PLAYING WITH FIRE

  THE MISSING DEAD (also known as THICKER THAN WATER)

  BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

  CROSSING THE LINE

  SCARRED FOR LIFE

  FOR RICHER, FOR POORER

  NOTHING BUT TROUBLE

  EYE FOR AN EYE

  SILENT SUSPECT

  The Andrew Hunter series

  SOMETHING WICKED

  SOMETHING HIDDEN

  SOMETHING BURIED

  Short Stories

  JANUARY

  FEBRUARY

  MARCH

  APRIL

  Silver Blackthorn

  RECKONING

  RENEGADE

  RESURGENCE

  Other

  DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN

  NO PLACE LIKE HOME

  WATCHED

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Something Wicked

  Kerry’s Email Sign-Up

  Books by Kerry Wilkinson

  Something Hidden

  The Girl Who Came Back

  The Wife’s Secret

  Last Night

  Two Sisters

  The Death and Life of Eleanor Parker

  One

  Andrew Hunter blinked his eyes closed in a momentary effort to escape the strobing lights that were pummelling him. As onslaughts went, certainly when it came to torture methods, this was pretty good. Not only were the blinking, flickering coloured bulbs above doing their best to disorientate him, the thumping music left him unable to hear anything other than bass and the singer’s vague warblings.

  There had to be laws about this sort of thing. Wasn’t there a Geneva Convention? Something about human rights? It wouldn’t be quite so bad if he hadn’t paid ten quid for the privilege of losing two of his five senses.

  Andrew opened his eyes again, but the lights were still battering a headache his way. As they winked on, it gave him a fleeting view of the rest of the nightclub. There were three levels. He was at the top, leaning on the banister and peering towards the dance floor on the ground. A mass of bodies writhed into one another, arms flailing into the air. Others were flapping around as if they were all having a fit at the same time.

  The second level was some sort of VIP lounge thing, where it cost another tenner for admittance. From what Andrew could see, it was all leather couches, martinis and blokes in suits. It had that wanker vibe to it.

  The top level was for the hardcore drinkers. There were bars at opposite ends and, though the music was still abysmally awful, not to mention thunderously loud, it was almost bearable.

  Andrew started to turn towards the bar, just as a cheer erupted from below. The song had changed, but was that a reason to celebrate quite so loudly? He didn’t get nightclubs – he never had. Even when he’d been in his teens and early twenties, places like this were a mystery. He was all for a pint in the pub, bit of a chat, that sort of thing. Who could possibly enjoy this sort of sensory deprivation?

  The floor was uncomfortably sticky, lathered with spilled drinks and who knew what else, as Andrew crossed towards the bar. If that wasn’t bad enough, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d sweated so much. Possibly back at school when they did cross-country on the hottest day for twenty-eight years. If not that, there was the best-forgotten incident in the sauna in Riga.

  Andrew squeezed past some rugby sort with big shoulders and a square head, finding himself a spot at the bar.

  ‘Oi, mate, whatcha after?’

  Andrew swivelled, accidentally brushing across the sleeve of the man standing next to him. The reveller’s white shirt was translucent with sweat, giving Andrew a lovely, clammy palmful of strange-man perspiration.

  Andrew wiped the contaminated hand on his trousers, though the sweaty man didn’t seem to notice. The barman was still staring at Andrew, wanting a response. ‘Bottle of sparkling water, please,’ Andrew said.

  The barman shot him a look of bemusement before crouching and opening one of the fridges. He told Andrew the price, which would have been extortionate even if the water had been retrieved from the moon and then carbonated via the process of trained monkeys blowing bubbles through straws. Andrew handed over the money anyway and then the barman disappeared off to the till.

  Water in hand, Andrew shuffled away from his spot, moving to the other side of a slumped girl to get a better view of the other end of the bar. When he was close enough, he turned around, leaning back onto the varnished wood and holding the bottle to his lips. He stared up towards the large screen that was showing either music videos or porn – hard to tell these days – while half-watching the couple underneath.

  The man was eighteen or nineteen, with hair that was swished sideways as if he’d been caught in a vicious side wind. He was wearing tight jeans and a slim-fit top, showing off solid upper-arm muscles. He leaned over the woman next to him, bottle of bright blue somethingoranother clasped in his hand, smiling at her with perfect teeth and then whispering enough to make her giggle.

  Jenny Mays worked as Andrew’s assistant at his private investigator’s office and he wasn’t used to seeing her giggle, not like this. This was an act. Whatever Windswept Boy had said hadn’t been funny at all. She was dressed for the occasion. Her dark hair that was usually in a ponytail was up in a perfect bun or bob-type thing that only women could manage. Andrew wondered how they learned to do such things without it all falling out. Were there pins involved? He had enough trouble getting a comb through his.

  As well as having done something to her hair, Jenny was in some sort of flared flirty red dress that Andrew would usually associate with 1950s diner waitresses. He wasn’t sure what to make of it. Jenny didn’t really do dresses. It was usually flat shoes or Doc Martens, skirts with tights, or jeans – or, sometimes, usual office-wear. She was playing with a dark bracelet, looping her finger underneath and twiddling it in a circle. It was pe
rfectly natural and yet, somehow, she was making it an act of seduction. She was a chameleon, adjusting herself to fit into wherever she was needed.

  Jenny was breaking the rules – even though he’d gone through them with her in his car before they’d got anywhere near the line to enter the club. Rule one: Don’t be alone with Max Grayson.

  Broken – they were in the corner together, at least a couple of metres from anyone else.

  Rule two: No touching Max Grayson.

  Broken – Max had the hand with the bottle brushing Jenny’s arm, the other touching the hemline of her dress, rubbing an area that wasn’t quite knee but wasn’t quite thigh, either. He was leaning in, talking into her ear, with Jenny reciprocating by whispering back into his. Not to mention flashing Max that pinball ding-ding dimple-ridden get-out-of-jail smile along with the big brown-eyed aren’t-I-wonderful stare.

  Andrew realised he’d been looking at them for too long, so angled himself up towards the big screen again and took a sip from his water. He wondered when he might step in, given Jenny was already breaking rules one and two. Would he wait until Max the octopus had a hand on Jenny’s backside? Her breasts? Would she stop him? Would he?

  If he really thought about it, he was pimping her out, wasn’t he? She might have volunteered, might have cut him off and said she’d do whatever when he brought this up, but it was still his idea at its core. What was wrong with him?

  Jenny laughed loudly and, when Andrew glanced back to them, Max was whispering in her ear again. It had to be done, so Andrew took out his phone, pointed it towards them and snapped a picture. He checked over his shoulder, making sure nobody was watching, and then clicked three more as Jenny and Max switched positions, with her talking into his ear. It might have been the angle, but from where Andrew was standing, it looked like Max had a couple of fingers underneath the hemline of Jenny’s dress. Definitely more thigh than knee.

  Andrew knew he had to move. This was too much. He had to come over all fatherly, give it the old, ‘Time to leave’ rigmarole.

  Before Andrew could move though, Jenny did. She slipped underneath Max’s arm, taking his free hand with hers, guiding him around a table towards the darker reaches at the back of the club. Andrew followed while trying to make it look like he wasn’t following. It was a tough act to pull off, mainly consisting of him bobbing his head somewhat in time to the music while sipping his water. It probably looked like he had some sort of medical condition.

  Jenny led Max down the stairs, still holding his hand. They passed the second floor VIP entrance and kept going towards the ground. Andrew couldn’t work out why they were heading to the dance floor, but then it turned out they weren’t anyway. As he squeezed apologetically between a pair of young women, Andrew saw Max and Jenny disappearing through the door of the disabled toilet together. He arrived just in time to hear the click of the lock slotting into place.

  Okay, this was bad.

  He should have probably come up with a rule three: No sneaking off to toilets with Max Grayson, but he generally thought that would have been covered by both rules one and two. With Jenny, it was hard to know how much she’d taken on board and by what amount she was going to go off and do her own thing anyway.

  Andrew was in a dim corridor that smelled of stale sweat. It was so rancid that it was close to wiping out sense number three. If the club could find a way to get rid of his taste and touch, it’d be a clean sweep.

  Somewhere towards the dance floor, there was the sound of glass breaking and then another cheer.

  Andrew thought about knocking on the door. Perhaps faking a limp and pretending he needed the disabled toilet? Maybe he should kick through the door, action-hero style, riding to Jenny’s rescue?

  Or perhaps, as she had displayed so many times before, Jenny didn’t need him in order to get the information they wanted.

  Andrew leaned against the wall and then regretted it. The surface was coated with either condensation or sweat – hopefully the former. Three more girls passed, shooting him awkward ‘who’s-the-granddad?’ looks, so Andrew had to style it out, offering smiles and nods, while leaning into the damp-ridden wall.

  Was this a new low? It was hard to tell. There was the time he’d accidentally thrown food over the woman who later became his wife. Then the occasion where he proposed to the same woman on one knee, barely a metre from a freshly piddled puddle of piss. They were sort of bittersweet memories; this was all bitter. Then the whole thing with her becoming his ex-wife.

  Just as Andrew was wondering if he should try to find a manager somewhere, there was a click and then the door popped open. Max’s head emerged before the rest of him. He checked both ways, straightened his shirt and then headed off through the open door on the other side of the corridor into the throbbing mass on the dance floor.

  Andrew watched him go and then, a couple of seconds later, Jenny’s head poked out, closely followed by the rest of her. She eyed Andrew and then winked, before breaking into a full-on grin. The music was so much louder on the ground floor that he couldn’t hear her, but she mouthed ‘okay?’ and Andrew nodded. She cracked a grin that felt both relieving and dangerous.

  Moments later, she was pushing through the fire exit at the far end of the corridor, Andrew just behind. She skipped – actually skipped – across a patch of wasteland until she was in an alley that passed between two houses. By the time Andrew had caught up, she was holding her hand out towards him.

  ‘Got it,’ she said.

  Andrew looked down at what she was offering him – a small polythene bag filled with white powder.

  ‘What is it?’ Andrew asked, taking the bag and holding it up to the nearby street light.

  ‘Max said it was cocaine – so it’s either that or mashed-up paracetamol.’

  Andrew opened the bag and sniffed it. It didn’t really smell of anything, but then he wasn’t sure if cocaine had an odour anyway. That wasn’t the point. He strode to the nearby drain and turned the bag upside down, emptying it all and then pushing the bag into the adjacent bin.

  Jenny was next to him and was soon strolling towards his car, which was parked a few streets away. At least, Andrew assumed that was where she was headed. He wasn’t sure where he’d left the car and all the streets around this area of Manchester looked the same.

  ‘Jen,’ he called.

  She waited until he was at her side and then they walked together. ‘What?’ she replied.

  ‘It’s cold – take my jacket.’

  Andrew went to drape it around her shoulder but she shrugged him off. ‘Don’t be daft.’

  Not wanting to be the only one of them properly clothed, Andrew draped it over his arm and continued walking. ‘We’ve got to have a very serious word about sticking to pre-agreed rules,’ he added.

  ‘Pfft.’

  ‘And about that. You can’t keep going “pfft” to get out of things.’

  ‘I bet I can.’ She laughed, not like the giggle she’d offered Max in the club, but for real. Andrew could see the creases in her cheeks.

  ‘Fine,’ Andrew said, ‘but it could have been dangerous. You put yourself in a vulnerable position and I blame myself because I let you.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Jen, it’s not fine.’

  She batted a hand towards him and then stopped, one hand on her hip. ‘I did this for you and you don’t even trust me enough to tell me why Max is so important.’

  Andrew felt a couple of inches tall. She was right. She had done this for him without needing to know the reason. And that was after he’d promised her she wouldn’t ever have to do this sort of honeytrap work. He was a scumbag.

  ‘It’s not because I don’t trust you, Jen.’

  ‘Then why is it?’

  He couldn’t face her. ‘It’s because I’ve made a terrible mistake.’

  Two

  It was no surprise that Jenny was in the office ahead of Andrew the following morning. He often wondered if she had some sort of tracker
on him, enabling her to set off just in time to get there first. He generally aimed to be in for around half past nine, but even when he got in at nine, or earlier, there she was.

  Their argument from the previous night – if it could be called that – was seemingly forgotten as Andrew switched on his computer.

  ‘Wanna brew?’ Jenny asked. She was fresh-faced and wide awake, despite their late-night escapades.

  Andrew was feeling rough and he’d not even been drinking. It was hard to tell quite why he felt so bad, but it was probably the combination of the music and the lights. He felt like he’d lost a fight with a glitterball.

  Jenny glided across the room effortlessly, hair back in its usual ponytail, dress replaced by tight semi-smart jeans and a plain top. She’d not asked about the nature of his mistake the previous night and he’d not expanded. He was embarrassed by his own decisions.

  As he slumped into his chair, Andrew started to feel his temples thumping. He definitely had a headache on the way. Jenny pottered behind him, flicking the kettle on and then fiddling with teabags and milk.

  Andrew watched her humming to herself as she fingered through the wall calendar, crossing something off and writing a few things onto various dates in the future. He’d worked fine by himself before hiring her and yet now he couldn’t remember what it was like to be on his own in the office. She’d somehow ended up doing much of the admin he hadn’t liked in the first place.