Page 4 of Worse Than Murder (DCI Matilda Darke Thriller #13)

Shit. My eyes have blurred. Here come the tears.

Distraction. Distraction. I need a distraction.

I wonder what I’ll be having for tea tonight? I fancy a big juicy steak. I hope Philip has one going spare I can nab. Maybe with a crispy jacket potato and some salad. Lovely.

* * *

Two months ago, I received an anonymous email from someone claiming to have committed five perfect murders.

I’ve been a police officer for more than twenty years, a detective for more than fifteen.

I know there’s no such thing as the perfect murder.

There was something about this that felt different, though.

I don’t know if it was the wording or what, but I had to look further into the claims. It turns out, whoever was doing this was right. He’d defeated me.

The first victim, twenty-year-old university student Liam Walsh suffered with depression and anxiety.

He wanted to kill himself but didn’t want to die alone.

He accessed the dark web and posted a message on a suicide message board looking for someone to enter into a suicide pact with him.

The killer was waiting online and groomed Liam.

At the top of the Art’s Tower in Sheffield, one of the city’s tallest buildings, the killer revealed his true identity and pushed Liam to his death.

Liam had left behind a suicide note for his mother and the coroner accepted this to be true. Liam’s death was registered as suicide.

Twenty-year-old Josie Pettifer was the second victim.

The killer ingratiated himself into her life and they developed a relationship, which, unbeknown to Josie, was completely one-sided.

Josie suffered with many allergies, one of which was a peanut allergy.

While preparing a meal, Josie’s faux boyfriend laced her salmon with peanut oil.

She had a massive anaphylactic shock, and the killer simply sat back and watched her die.

Her death was recorded as a tragic accident.

Victim number three was eighty-six-year-old Audrey Wildgoose.

She had recently been diagnosed with dementia and was being looked after by kindly neighbours until a place could be found for her at a nursing home.

One morning, a neighbour visited to find the back door wide open.

Audrey was later found in a nearby park.

All signs pointed to her dying from exposure.

If it wasn’t for me receiving these emails from the killer claiming his victims, the coroner would have stated that Audrey had simply left the house one night, and in her confusion, had been unable to remember the way back home.

There was a marked difference with the fourth victim.

The previous three all had elements to their personalities a killer could take advantage of, and they’d all appeared, at one time or another, in the local newspaper, which is how we believed he was finding his victims. Natasha Klein was different.

Nineteen-year-old Natasha was a wannabe influencer– not a proper job, if you ask me.

She lived her life by social media. How she appeared on the killer’s radar, I couldn’t work out.

Maybe he’d been spying on her social media pages and become obsessed with her.

Until I catch him, I won’t know the truth.

Natasha was listed as a missing person and her disappearance made headlines around the country.

The tabloids love a beautiful teenager. A candlelight vigil in Sheffield city centre went viral for all the wrong reasons.

It wasn’t long after that I received another email telling me where he had left Natasha.

I found her hidden in woodland. She had died from hypothermia and exposure.

He’d simply left her there to die a slow and painful death.

Four victims down, one to go.

Why do I keep going over this in my head? I’m pushing myself. I’m literally killing myself every time I think about this. Why don’t I just put myself out of my own misery by walking into the lake with a couple of rocks in each pocket?

The killer called me. He phoned me and told me that he’d been watching me. He knew all about my mum’s recent money worries and the fact her gas fire wasn’t working properly. He told me my mum was his final victim.

I couldn’t get to her house fast enough.

Looking back, I’ve no memory of the journey.

I called my sister, Harriet. She told me she was just returning from a weekend away in Scotland with her new boyfriend.

She had left her sons, beautiful Joseph and Nathan, with our mum.

All three of them were in that house. We found them…

dear God… we found them… they were dead.

Joseph and Nathan, teenagers with their whole lives ahead of them.

They were in bed and looked as if they were sleeping. Mum was clinging to life.

I shouldn’t be thinking about any of this.

That’s why I go running. That’s why I pound the uneven ground of the Cumbrian countryside, to put my body through so much pain that I focus on my aching joints and muscles and not the torment going through my mind.

If only I could flick a switch and turn my brain off.

Four days after Nathan and Joseph’s lifeless bodies were discovered, four days after Mum was rushed into hospital, four days since the last email from that bastard killer telling me his work was complete, and me and Harriet were sitting either side of our mum’s bed in a private room at the Northern General Hospital.

We’d hardly spoken. Harriet blamed me. Every time we made eye contact, I could see the hatred there.

I don’t blame her. I’d hate me, too. In fact, I do. I hate myself.

Dr Felicity Wilde walked into the room. Her face was ashen. I knew what she was going to say before she even opened her mouth. I remember the conversation word for word. It’s on permanent repeat.

‘I’ve had a meeting this morning with two consultants.

’ She was using a low, sympathetic tone.

I wanted to slap her. ‘We’ve looked at your mother’s charts and condition and I’m afraid it doesn’t look likely there will be any improvement.

We’ve run all manner of tests, as you know, and there is no function in the brain whatsoever.

It’s only the machines she is currently hooked up to that are keeping her alive.

We all agree that it would be in all of your best interests if we switched them off. ’

“We all agree…” We? Who is the we? I haven’t been asked. Harriet hasn’t been asked. We’re her daughters. Why not ask our opinions?

To say the relationship I had with my mother was fractious would be an understatement.

She never liked my job. However, in recent years, especially since the death of my father, the ice had started to thaw.

I genuinely did love my mum. I turned to look at her.

She looked old. Her eyes were closed, her skin was dry and free of makeup, her hair was flecked with grey.

She would have hated how she looked right then.

If I was being honest, I’d known for days that Mum was gone, just by looking at her.

There was no life emanating from her at all.

I’d clung on to the merest hint of hope.

Now, Dr Wilde was telling us that there was no hope.

I looked up and across the bed to Harriet. Tears were streaming down her face. I wanted to rush around and hold her tight and never let go, but I knew she wouldn’t allow it.

‘Is there nothing you can do?’ Harriet asked.

It was a pointless question. I knew the doctors had done everything possible for Mum. They’d really gone above and beyond.

Dr Wilde shook her head. ‘Your mum’s brain was starved of oxygen for too long, I’m afraid.’

Harried grabbed for a tissue on the bedside table and loudly blew her nose. ‘Mum wanted to be an organ donor…’ she said, leaving the sentence open.

I knew this wouldn’t be allowed to happen. Mum’s death would be investigated as part of an ongoing murder case. There would be no chance of her organs being donated while that was carried out.

‘Unfortunately,’ Dr Wilde began. ‘The amount of carbon monoxide your mum inhaled, added with the lack of oxygen, will have made the organs unusable for transplantation.’

Harriet cried more tears. Mum always wanted her death to have meaning, to have her organs live on in someone else.

I thought that was very generous of her.

Harriet always found it creepy but, faced with Mum’s death, she seemed to have come round and found it comforting that Mum’s heart could beat again in someone else’s body. Not now, though.

‘When?’ Harriet began. ‘When do we… you know?’

‘There’s no rush,’ Dr Wilde said. ‘Take time to say goodbye. Come and find me when you’re ready.’ She turned on her heel and left the room. She couldn’t get out fast enough.

When we’re ready? When can anyone ever be ready for killing their mother?

The atmosphere plunged as me and Harriet made eye contact.

‘Mum always hated your job,’ Harriet eventually said. Her voice was low and heavy with vitriol. I’d never seen her so full of venom.

‘I know.’

‘She dreaded getting the call saying you’d been killed or maimed in the line of duty.’

I nodded.

‘In the past few years, things have happened to you that have hurt this family. You’ve been shot, kidnapped, knocked unconscious and driven into a reservoir.

You’ve been stalked. Even on Christmas Day, someone came to your house and put a noose on the front door to taunt you.

The signs were all there that one day something horrible, something devastating, was going to happen to your family.

You could have stopped all of this horror from happening.

’ Harriet spoke slowly. She was struggling to keep hold of her dark emotion. I could see she was shaking with fear.

‘Nothing I could have done—’ I began.

‘You are poison,’ she interrupted.

I hated myself even more for doing this to Harriet. She looked drawn. She seemed to have aged twenty years in the past few days. She was barely recognisable as the confident, fun-loving single mother I admired.

‘You’re the angel of death. Everywhere you go, everyone you’re in contact with either dies or has something shocking happen to them. You’ve killed my boys, Matilda. You’ve killed them.’

There was nothing I could say. I was already blaming myself.

Harriet sniffed hard. She tucked her knotted hair behind her ears and composed herself. ‘Joseph and Nathan will be buried at Hutcliffe Wood next Tuesday at ten o’clock. I don’t want you anywhere near there.’

‘What? Harriet, they’re my nephews.’ I needed to say goodbye to them.

‘You killed them,’ she said again. Her harsh voice was a mere whisper, quivering with pent-up anger itching to escape.

‘I had no idea…’

‘I don’t want to hear it,’ she said, wiping away tears as they fell down her face in a torrent. ‘I can’t stop you coming to Mum’s funeral, but I don’t want you anywhere near me. I don’t want you to look at me, or talk to me, ever again. As far as I’m concerned, I’m an only child.’

‘Harriet.’

She stood up and headed for the door. ‘I’m going outside for some air. We’ll talk about what to do for Mum when I get back. But when this is all over, you and me are finished. I never want to see you again.’

‘Harriet, wait,’ I jumped up and grabbed her arm. That was a mistake.

She shook me off and spun round to face me. Her eyes were wide. She looked as if she was about to lunge at me and gouge my eyes out.

‘When Dad was shot, Mum begged and pleaded with you to leave the police force. She told you to think of what you were putting her through every time you went to work. You ignored her. This is the consequence of that. You killed my dad. You killed my sons. You killed my mum. And you’ve killed me.

’ She leaned in close, her face a mere inch from mine.

I honestly thought she was going to hit me.

I wish she had done. ‘I fucking hate you,’ she spat.

Harriet stormed out of the room, leaving me on my own.

I went back to the bed, sat down, and took my mother’s hand in mine. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to her. I meant it but it sounded hollow. Harriet was right. I’d destroyed everything.

* * *

I don’t know how I got through the next week.

The day of my mum’s funeral is a blur. I remember returning home to my house and I didn’t know what to do.

I poured myself a drink, a large vodka, and I wondered what was the point in carrying on anymore.

I rummaged around in the messy drawer in the kitchen and found a few boxes of paracetamol.

I managed to get together around twenty.

Would that be enough? That’s how bad it was.

I wanted to die. I was prepared to kill myself.

I didn’t, obviously. I think the thought of killing myself frightened me more than the act itself.

I packed a bag and headed for the Lake District.

I needed to leave Sheffield behind, confine it to the pages of history.

Philip and Sally had reached out to me when the news of what had happened had broken.

They offered me a place to go if I needed time away. That’s what I needed. Time away.

I’ve been here a month now. I haven’t spoken to them about what happened yet, about a serial killer plaguing me, taunting me, destroying everything in my life, and they haven’t asked, either.

They know I’ll open up when I want to, in my own time.

They’ve learned, from when Carl returned home, that it’s important to allow the one who is suffering to recover in their own time.

They’ve been so good with Carl and his recovery. And now they’re being good to me.

My life now consists of going out every day to run or swim in the lake.

Sometimes more than once a day. Right now, I’m running.

I run until my legs are numb and it feels like my lungs are about to explode, and when I get that feeling, I run harder.

I need to feel the agony. I need to punish myself.

Many times I have to stop in order to throw up beside a tree.

Then, I’ll give myself a few minutes to recover, swill my mouth out with the water bottle attached to my hip, then off I go again, running, running for my life, running away from myself.