Blue Steel Chain (Trowchester Blues Book 3) Read online

  “Murdering people? Yeah. Yeah, they do, James. I don’t know the story behind this but . . .”

  James had been brought to a complete stop. Now it was as if a dynamo began to spin up inside him, generating movement, heat, action. He headed back up the tunnel at a jog, the others following. His mind had still not accepted the connection Michael had made, but his body was taking no risks. “It’s not like that. The guy’s just jealous. He smacks his partner around a little—well, a lot, really—and he’s seen the two of us talking and he’s unreasonably jealous, but . . .”

  Michael snorted as they burst back into the light. “You’ve just given me the backstory of pretty much every murder I ever investigated. Guy smacks his partner around? Guy has a corpse in his back garden? Open-and-shut case. Finn? You can see pretty much everything from the top of this hill. You go up there and keep a watch, okay? Tell us if anyone’s approaching.”

  The only one of them not accustomed to dead bodies, Finn was pale green as if he would glow in the dark, but he nodded gamely and climbed the hill to keep a look out. James and Michael threaded though the paths between the ornamental hedges and the fruit trees that were just beginning to flower, until they came to the long concrete bunker of the house.

  “Don’t suppose you have keys?” Michael asked.

  One of the glass walls had a chrome handle with a keyhole beneath. James tugged at it, frustrated and frightened. “No. I do . . . I do have Aidan’s permission to come and get him, though. He was in a bad way. I don’t know if he’s going to be up to opening the doors for us. Oh, Michael, you should have seen him. Limping and bruised and scared. And now he’s probably lying there dying of shock or something. We have to—”

  “You have his permission to enter?”

  “Yes.” James wasn’t sure if it was strictly true, but he wasn’t going to quibble at this point. “It wouldn’t be burglary, if you’re worried about that.”

  Michael quirked a smile as he leaned his ear close to the door. There was an implement that looked a little like an IKEA Allen key on his key ring, and he worked this into the lock of the door with practised, delicate movements alongside the blade of his penknife. “I see Finn’s been exaggerating my moral probity again . . . Ah. There we go.”

  James had the best friends in the world, and he fully intended that Aidan should have them too. He slid the door open and dashed inside.

  Even Dave would have been creeped out by the amount of steel and chrome inside this house. He couldn’t call it a home. It was too spare and bare and severe for that. Its white emptiness gave him hives.

  “I’ll check upstairs. You take this floor and downstairs.” Michael gave him an encouraging look as he turned for the staircase. “Just yell if you need me.”

  “Okay.” James swallowed in an attempt to wet his dry mouth. Tried not to imagine what he would find, just peeled off in the opposite direction, loping down the stairs. He passed a utility room, a boot room, and a pantry, all scrubbed and intensely neat. The passage terminated in a gym with screen-lined walls and that air of tedious torment that clung to all these places.

  Actually, no, the air was fouler than the normal gym’s reek of sweat and boredom. Something about the smell made his heart hammer, made all the shadows loom like threats. It didn’t look like there was anyone in here, but he jogged round the circuit of the room to make sure Aidan was not lying collapsed behind a machine.

  A little pile of ornamental blue links spilled out from under a stack of weights, fallen to mingle among the heavier staples of the kind of chain you use to tie up a dangerous dog. James’s imagination tried to tell him Aidan had been collared here and tied up like a disobedient animal, and he refused to believe it, because that was horrible, and people weren’t like that. Not even the bad ones.

  Still, he backed away from the broken necklace as if it was a rattlesnake, remembering the bruises around Aidan’s neck, finally working out what had put them there. That was really . . . No, he was not . . .

  He went up the stairs two at a time, back to the wide emptiness of the dual-level sitting room. Michael was just coming down the stairs at the same time.

  “D’you find him?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Then he’s on this level. Keep opening doors.”

  Michael went to the left, threw open a door into another corridor, at the end of which the moving silver light of an indoor pool licked and flickered over the ceiling. James tried the right. Found a library and a kitchen.

  The next door wouldn’t open. Something soft was blocking it—it rolled a little when he pushed, but then wedged itself firmly and would go no farther.

  “Michael, here!”

  “You’ve got thinner forearms than me.” Michael sized up the situation with a look of experience and dread. “Get on your knees. While I hold it open, feel through the gap for whatever’s blocking it and try to ease it away.” He closed his eyes for a moment, visibly nerving himself up.

  “What’s wrong?” James asked, because he’d thought Michael was unflappable, and he didn’t have time for this, damn it.

  Michael looked up at him with a gallows smile. “Oh, I just hate it when we do this and it turns out to be a corpse.”

  “Well, that’s not going to happen this time.” James was infuriated by the very idea. He’d said he was coming in time and he had, and that was how it was going to be. Kneeling down, he inserted his fingers and then his wrist through the narrow opening of the door. Michael pushed, and he could get his forearm through and lean his face against the gap to see with one eye into a small study.

  Venetian blinds on the window made everything inside stripy, gunmetal furniture gleaming in rulers of light, sulking in the stripes of shadow. Aidan lay on the floor on his stomach with his shoulder blocking the door, his face turned away from James. In the tricky light, James couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but he could see bloodstains like scattered poppies on the white carpet. When he got his hand beneath Aidan’s shoulder, he could feel it was warm.

  “Aidan!” he shouted, trying to raise that shoulder, push Aidan upwards and over to free the door. “Aidan, it’s me, James. Get back from the door, please. Come on, get up.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “I don’t . . . I can’t reach a pulse. But he’s warm. Aidan! Listen to me. Wake up! Come on, come on, please!”

  There! He thought there’d been a movement, a contraction of the muscle turning the lax smoothness of Aidan’s shoulder hard. “Aidan, Aidan. Come on, that’s it, come on. Turn over.”

  Aidan must have been conscious enough to hear him. He gasped, and a sobbing inhalation of breath almost robbed James of his own.

  “Please, Aidan, it’s me, James. Come on now, turn over for me.”

  He shoved again with his extended hand, hoping to give Aidan the idea, and it worked. Aidan rolled slightly to one side, his shoulder lifted off the floor, and the moment it was at the correct angle, Michael pushed the door, flipping Aidan to his back, letting the door open wide enough for them both to eel through.

  Aidan had been moved into a stripe of sunlight and was lying like a figure carved on a tomb. One of those terrible thirteenth-century memento mori, designed to exhibit the impermanence of the flesh. Blood smeared his throat and his cheek, where a cut the shape of a boot toe nestled in the centre of a swelling bruise.

  Michael nudged James aside. “Aidan, is it?”

  The strange voice woke Aidan as nothing else had. Both eyes were bloodshot as he focused a frightened gaze on Michael, looked to James, tried to relax. He nodded.

  “You hit your head anywhere? Your neck?”

  James’s phone buzzed in his pocket as Aidan whispered, “N-no.”

  “Look at me.” Michael peered intently into Aidan’s eyes. Checking his pupils, James realized, glad again that he had such strangely experienced friends. “You get what I’m asking you? I’m asking if it’s safe to pick you up.”

  James thumbed the screen on. A text from Finn read,
Car approaching. Shit.

  “Michael. Piers is on his way. We’ve got to get out now.”

  Michael glanced up from where he was crouched on the floor next to Aidan, seeming boulder-like in the odd lighting—like a troll waking up once the sun had gone down, looking around for something to fight. “I can hold the partner off if you can carry him.”

  That would be a wonderful way to repay his friends’ kindness, wouldn’t it? Getting them arrested for affray. “I don’t know that I can. He’s heavier than me.”

  “I can walk!” Aidan managed to get to his knees before clutching at his stomach and doubling over, throwing up his dinner on the deep white carpet.

  Noises outside resolved into footsteps coming closer. In an explosion of movement, Michael got an arm under Aidan’s knees, another beneath his shoulders, and picked him up. James threw the door wide for them both and they ran for it along the long bare coverless expanse of the living room.

  Keys rattled in the lock, a shadow moving on the floor where Piers’s feet blocked the afternoon sun. James gauged the distance back to the patio doors. They were not going to make it.

  “Michael!” He grabbed the man by the belt, pushed him towards the upstairs stairwell. Michael glanced over his shoulder, saw the front door beginning to open, ducked into the minimal cover, going up a couple of steps and stopping, breathing hard. Aidan was a foot taller than him and muscular, heavy and obviously awkward in his arms. James wished he could take him instead but was sure he didn’t have the strength.

  They huddled against the walls, as Piers shut the door behind himself, slipped off his shoes. James tried not to pant, put a hand over his mouth to try to muffle the sound, but what was the point? The moment Piers tried to go upstairs, or even just passed the stairs to go down to the gym where he must have left Aidan, he would see them there. And he was already walking this way.

  Shit shit shit! James closed his eyes, shutting out Michael’s anxious look, forced himself to be calm, to think.

  Yes!

  Quickly, he thumbed his phone back on, dialled the number that was written on the back of his hand. The phone in Piers’s office began to ring, shattering the brittle silence.

  “Oh, what the hell is it now?” Piers’s footsteps stopped. “All right, I’m coming.”

  Michael slid down a step, his back against the wall, leaned out just slightly and then beckoned with a jerk of his head. “He’s in the office, quick. He’s gonna find . . .”

  They dashed for the door. James slid it open, waited for Michael to carry Aidan through before he followed. Slid it shut in the hope they could get away before Piers came out of the—

  And he did. They were still steadying themselves on the garden path, Michael hitching Aidan’s limp form upwards again, when Piers stepped out of the office, his face like fury and a torn photograph in one hand.

  A startled, frozen moment when James hoped desperately that he wouldn’t— And Piers looked up. Their gazes met, and James felt as though he had been dropped into liquid nitrogen. A shock like lightning went down his back, and then his mind caught up.

  They’d been seen. So it didn’t matter if he made noise. He tilted his head back and yelled, “Finn!” at full volume. “Run!”

  He was about to do the same, heading for the fields, when Michael grabbed him by the arm. “Car’s round the front. Come on.”

  They sprinted through the gardens, around the house. Finn’s car was parked farther along the lane in a lay-by, but as they came within sight of it Piers stormed back through the front door and up the drive, trying to intercept them. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

  He was brandishing a golf club like a medieval mace. James put a hand in Michael’s pocket, grabbed his keys, and sprinted for the car just as Finn came flying hard out of the garden like that guy from Chariots of Fire.

  James started the engine, rolled the car up to Michael’s side, and together he and Finn got Aidan in the backseat while Michael stood in front of them with folded arms, staring Piers down.

  “What I’m doing is removing an assault victim from the scene of the crime.” Michael walked forward, crowding into Piers’s space, making it hard for him to bring the long weapon into play. “You want to make something of that?”

  He reached out a spread hand and shoved Piers in the chest. Looking astonished that anyone would dare use violence against him, Piers reeled back, glanced nervously between Michael and Aidan.

  When Finn had introduced them all to his mysterious new boyfriend last year, he’d mentioned the man was frightening. James had never seen it before. He’d always found Michael self-effacing, even shy. He was seeing it now, and he wasn’t sure he liked it.

  “Finn,” he said nervously, “he’s going to get himself in trouble.”

  “And wouldn’t it be glorious?” Finn paused with his hand on the driver’s door. “Besides, d’you not think the man deserves a beating?”

  Michael had taken advantage of Piers’s recoil, closed the distance between them, going in for another shove. His expression was intent, almost serene. Piers fidgeted with the handle of the club, as if everything in him yearned to smack it into Michael’s eye, but he recognised he was facing someone who stood a chance of beating him, and he hesitated to start a fair fight.

  Aidan shook in the backseat, arms wrapped around himself, but he was obviously watching, obviously compos mentis. “Don’t hurt him. Please don’t hurt him.”

  And frankly, if James had been a less peaceable man, that plea would have made him want to skin Piers alive too. Fortunately, he was a civilized person, and this altercation badly needed one. He slid into the backseat to lean against Aidan, hoping that would give him some comfort. “We need to get Aidan away. We don’t need to end up on the wrong side of the law. Finn. Please.”

  Bloodthirsty little creature that he was, Finn actually sighed with disappointment. But he opened the car door wide and slipped into the driver’s seat. “Acushla! You’re not Batman. Leave him to the police.”

  Michael came to heel. Unwillingly, but he came, his face hard and doubtful as he threw himself into the back of the car, propping Aidan up on his other side. Finn slammed his own door and drove away. With a great sigh of relief, James craned his neck to watch Piers disappear behind them. Piers stood alone in the centre of the road, clutching his weapon and his photograph, looking utterly lost, as though he could not figure out what had just happened.

  “Well . . . that was quite the adventure.” Finn met James’s eyes in the driving mirror as he turned onto the ring road. “Where am I going now? Hospital?”

  Aidan pressed himself into James’s side. “I . . . I don’t need. I’m not . . . I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

  It was the longest sentence he’d managed so far. James noted with pleasure that his shakes were beginning to smooth out. His eyes looked alert enough, though bloodshot. But James didn’t want to take any chances.

  He could hear Michael on his phone on the other side of Aidan, talking to the police. Reporting a corpse found in suspicious circumstances. The bald official phrases brought it home. If they’d come too late—if Piers had decided to deal with Aidan before trying to find James—would they have found two dead bodies?

  He still couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t think about it now when more pressing things needed to be handled first. “I know you don’t want to go to the hospital,” he said gently, taking Aidan’s unbroken fingers in his. “But were you unconscious when we found you? Do we need to get you checked for concussion? What did he do?”

  Aidan started to shake his head, stopped with a wince. “He hit me in the stomach, and then I fell down the stairs. Then he kicked me a couple of times. So it wasn’t . . . it really wasn’t that bad.”

  He shuddered as though an icy wind had blown down the back of his neck, and James reconsidered the virtues of letting Michael loose on the man. That qualified as “not that bad,” did it? “Fucking hell.”

  “I mean—
I mean I don’t think anything else is broken. He chained me up and I crushed the chain under some weights and that was kind of . . . scary. So when I knew you were coming I kind of . . . I ran out of . . . I just had to lie down. You know?”

  “Well, that’s shock.” James tried not to give in to the impulse to put both arms around the man and hug him tight. Even if nothing extra had been broken this time, this morning he’d been walking as if he had fractured ribs from the last. “And you can die from that. We should get you to—”

  Michael covered the receiver of his phone, glanced James’s way. “You die from medical shock. This is emotional shock. It’s different. Get him somewhere safe, and he’ll be fine. Finn? We’ll go to ours.”

  “Righty-ho.”

  James had a moment of resentment at their high-handed tendency to take over everything, but it was derailed as Michael turned back to his conversation with the police.

  “Yeah. That means the prime murder suspect is at large. I’m hoping he’s confident enough that he’ll come after the partner rather than trying to destroy the evidence, but you might want to get there fast just in case.”

  “Prime murder suspect” was one of those things he wasn’t thinking about.

  Finn and Michael had a house by the river, its driveway shaded by neatly trimmed firs. Quite a grim-looking house from the outside, inside it was as quirky as they were, full of bookshelves and carpentry tools.

  The afternoon sun shone through the living room window, outside which a long garden full of wildflowers sloped down to a red and gold narrowboat moored on the hurrying river. James was well acquainted with the room—with its battered couches and polished floorboards—since Finn had moved the book club here. He helped Aidan over to the largest sofa, encouraged by the fact that Aidan was walking on his own again. Sometimes when Aidan wasn’t thinking, he would straighten up to look at a carving or an ornate piece of glasswork and take all his own weight. He was gaining strength moment by moment, like a plant that’d finally been watered after a long drought.