Wishbone: A chilling thriller with a dark twist (A DS Jason Smith Thriller Book 16) Read online

  WISHBONE

  Detective Jason Smith book 16

  BY STEWART GILES

  Copyright © 2021 Stewart Giles

  FOR CHRIS:

  THIS ONE IS RIGHT UP

  YOUR ALLEY, MATE.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Speak easy of the dead.”

  The words were barely coherent – the lead singer screamed out this part of the song to rouse the audience into such frenzy that the lyrics didn’t really matter anyway.

  It was a small crowd tonight – it was Tuesday, and the Student Union Hall was barely a third full but what the audience lacked in numbers they made up for with an enthusiasm the band rarely saw these days. Young men and women formed a writhing mass of bodies in front of the band and as each heart-wrenching yell exploded from the stage they reacted with screams of their own and now the band was in danger of being drowned out by their audience. One woman shrieked louder than the others and her ear-splitting wail could be heard above the rest.

  A crash of a cymbal announced the part of the song where the mood was about to change. The crowd slowed and for a moment the hall was deathly silent. The meandering bass line was joined by a haunting sequence of minor chords from the guitarist. Like a funeral dirge his melancholy strings stopped the crowd in their tracks.

  “For the dead will rise,” sang the singer in a voice no more than a whisper.

  Ronnie Freeman stared into the eyes of a woman in the front row as he sang. She stared back, transfixed.

  “They will come in the night,” he continued.

  The tempo was moving up a notch – the bass was now more insistent, and the drummer had started to up the volume on the snare drum.

  “Speak easy of the dead,” Ronnie repeated the words he’d screamed earlier only now they were easily understood. “Keep one eye open in bed.”

  Those in the audience who’d seen the band before knew what was coming next and a few of them were holding their breaths.

  “A wise man once said,” Ronnie’s voice deepened. “Be careful what you wish for.”

  There was movement at the side of the stage. Some people had gathered in the wings and it was clear that something was about to happen. A woman dressed in white was ushered onto centre stage by two big men dressed in black. One of them had a hood over his head but the other’s face was uncovered. The hooded man held something in his hands. It looked like a large medieval halberd.

  The music from the stage became louder still but the crowd remained silent.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Ronnie Freeman sang once more.

  The woman in white was on her knees now. A huge projector screen behind the band was turned on and the audience was blinded by white light for a moment.

  “Now….” Ronnie held onto that one word as the bass drum thumped a rhythmic beat and the bassist followed suit. Faster and faster they went and soon the audience joined in. Fists were thrust in the air in time with the hypnotic throb.

  “Off with her head!” the crowd screamed over and over.

  Off with her head.

  There was another loud crash on the cymbal – the drummer beat a fanfare on the snare drum then the music stopped. The screen behind the stage now depicted a graveyard on a misty evening. Tombs of the unknown were barely visible in the background. The snare sounded and soon the drum roll got quicker and quicker. The masked man holding the halberd raised it in the air. The drummer upped his pace – the masked man looked at the woman in white and brought the halberd down on her neck.

  The woman with the high-pitch shriek screamed.

  At the same time the lights on the stage went out and all the crowd could see was the graveyard scene on the screen behind the stage. Then the screen started to turn red. A thick ooze of blood fell from the top and soon the entire screen was a canvas of crimson. The screen turned black for a second then lights lit up the stage once more. The woman in white and her executioners were gone.

  * * *

  Ronnie Freeman lit his third cigarette in the space of twenty minutes and took a long drag. “I think that went down well tonight.”

  “Wishbone is getting stale,” Harry Tong argued.

  Harry was the bass player and the only remaining founding member of the band besides Ronnie. He and Ronnie had formed the group five years ago.

  “The crowd loved it,” Mick King added.

  As the drummer Mick was the newest addition to the band. Drummers never seemed to last long in Wishbone.

  “The crowd did love it,” Ronnie exhaled a huge cloud of smoke. “Where’s Sandy? I didn’t see her after the show.”

  “Perhaps the axe man slipped,” Harry suggested. “Perhaps he actually chopped her head off for real this time. It wouldn’t be too much of a tragedy.”

  “What wouldn’t be too much of a tragedy?” Sandy Powell had appeared at the table without Harry realising.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Where did you disappear to after the show?”

  “He was worried you’d had your head chopped off,” Ronnie told her.

  “I just had to pop out for a bit,” Sandy said. “You didn’t need me after the beheading scene anyway. That was a really great show.”

  Ronnie nodded to Harry. “Told you.”

  “Where did Chris end up?” Harry changed the subject.

  Chris Snow was the guitarist.

  “He hooked up with some weirdo,” Mick replied. “Some pretentious Sociology student or something. I left them to it when she started banging on about how our music was a true representation of the crises the young people of today have to face.”

  “She’s got a point,” Ronnie said and lit yet another cigarette.

  “Bollocks,” Mick said. “We write songs about death and the Bogeyman. And the dark side of humanity. It’s got nothing to do with the social woes of peo
ple our age.”

  “I write the songs,” Ronnie reminded him. “And you play drums to them. You have no idea where my lyrics come from. Not to mention the theatre behind the shows. I could be wrong, but last time I checked drummers’ opinions counted for nothing.”

  “Take it easy, Ron,” Harry said. “Chill, brother.”

  “Be careful what you wish for happens to be a great lyric,” Ronnie wasn’t finished yet.

  “I’m not arguing with that,” Mick said. “But how can some jumped-up student claim it’s a song about something it isn’t? People read far too much into song lyrics these days.”

  “If it touches them my job is half done,” Ronnie said. “If it makes them see things they didn’t see before then I’m satisfied. My words aren’t just song lyrics – they’re life observations.”

  Mick shook his head. “Bollocks. People see a cool song. End of story. Nothing more. You’ll be telling me we’ll have a spate of disillusioned young people chopping people’s heads off next.”

  “I’ll get another round in,” Harry had seen arguments like these last all night. “Where are we off to next?”

  Ronnie opened up his tablet and tapped the screen.

  “A city with a bit of a colourful history,” he said. “Wishbone’s next port of call is York. We’ve got a few gigs booked in York.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Laura Smith stared at the television screen in front of her but it was clear from her blank gaze that she wasn’t really watching. Peppa Pig had once been her favourite TV programme but now her face showed no sign of emotion as the animated pig jumped into yet another muddy puddle. Laura was five years old and she’d experienced things nobody her age should ever have to go through.

  Detective Constable Erica Whitton watched her daughter with a heavy heart. She looked for any signs of the little girl she’d been a month earlier. She remembered the spirited five-year-old that had watched the tarmac of the runway disappear as they set off on a journey that was supposed to be a trip of a lifetime.

  Australia had been a trip of a lifetime, and it was a holiday Whitton, Laura and Detective Sergeant Jason Smith would never forget for all the wrong reasons. Whitton still had a dull ache in her chest where the blade of the knife had gone in, almost killing her. She’d spent a long time in a coma and an even longer time in recovery.

  Smith had also been stabbed, but his wound was superficial, and he’d come back from it relatively swiftly.

  But it was Laura who had suffered most. What she’d gone through would take the longest time to get over. She’d seen things nobody her age should ever have to witness and Whitton wondered if she would ever be the same again.

  The doctors in Australia had explained that Laura’s physical injuries would heal quickly but it was the psychological trauma she’d suffered that would be harder to fix. They’d suggested she undergo some form of trauma counselling – something to break through the confusion she was no doubt consumed by after her ordeal, but neither Whitton nor Smith could decide whether this was going to help their daughter or not.

  Smith had dealt with everything that had happened in his own way. It was the only way he knew how to silence the demons inside him, and now he was sleeping off another journey into oblivion via the bottom of the bottle of Jack Daniel’s that now stood empty on the kitchen counter. They’d been home for less than a week and the kitchen bin was already full of empty bottles.

  “How is she?”

  Whitton glanced at her husband and knew straight away it wasn’t going to be a good day. Smith had come inside the living room dressed only in his boxers and a T-Shirt and Whitton sensed that was how he was going to stay. He looked exhausted. The tan he’d picked up from his time on the beach with Laura while Whitton was in hospital was gone – his blue eyes were bloodshot and haunted, and he had new lines on his face that made him look ten years older than he was.

  “She’s still the same,” she said. “I thought Peppa Pig would cheer her up a bit.”

  “A stupid cartoon isn’t going to help her, Erica,” Smith said.

  “At least I’m trying. I’m doing everything I can to try and help her through this.”

  “She’ll be fine,” Smith said. “She’ll come right in time.”

  “The Gospel according to Jason Smith?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Your solution to everything is to bury it away and hope for the best,” Whitton said. “She’s five-years-old, Jason – she’s been to hell and back, and she is not going to just come right in time.”

  “It’s the Australian way. She is not seeing a shrink.”

  They’d argued about this ever since their return to York. Smith had refused to take the advice of more than one doctor and make an appointment for Laura to get some counselling. He’d never had much faith in mental health experts and he wasn’t about to subject his daughter to the torture of a child psychologist. Whitton didn’t share his opinion and she’d argued her point until she was blue in the face. She’d even debated whether to take Laura to see a specialist behind Smith’s back but she was a hopeless liar and she knew it would be impossible to hide it from him.

  Smith looked at his daughter. Laura was still staring blankly at the television screen.

  “She’ll come right in time,” he said once more.

  “She needs to speak to someone about what happened,” Whitton said.

  “She is not going to see a shrink,” Smith insisted. “End of story.”

  “She needs help. She’s not like you – she can’t just bury things away with the help of a bottle of Jack. I’m going to make an appointment with that man Dr Taylor recommended.”

  “This isn’t up for debate,” Smith said. “My daughter is not going to see a shrink.”

  He sat on the carpet next to Laura. “Peppa Pig isn’t wearing her boots.”

  Laura continued to stare at the cartoon on the screen.

  “Does that mean she’s getting tired of jumping in muddy puddles?”

  She still didn’t react.

  “Perhaps she’s thinking about taking up a new hobby. Jumping in puddles has got boring and she’s decided to take up knitting.”

  Laura rested her head on his shoulder. Smith wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tightly.

  Theakston and Fred ambled into the room. The aging Bull Terrier and the gruesome Pug joined Smith and Laura on the carpet. Fred flopped down and nuzzled Laura’s leg. Theakston collapsed next to him. The rather overweight Bull Terrier was almost ten years old now and he tired easily.

  “Knitting is for old people.”

  Smith looked up at Whitton and smiled. She half-smiled back. Laura had barely spoken a word since they’d returned from Australia and every time she did they felt some semblance of hope that things might one day return to normal.

  “Nanna likes knitting,” Laura added. “And she’s old.”

  Smith kissed her on the top of the head and breathed in the scent of her hair. It was something he never tired of – the soft, sweet scent of her scalp was the smell of innocence.

  “Don’t tell Nanna she’s old, OK?”

  The doorbell rang and Fred jumped to his feet. Theakston couldn’t be bothered to get up and stayed where he was. Smith stood up and went to answer the door. He returned shortly afterwards with DS Bridge.

  “I just popped in to see how you’re doing,” Bridge said. “Hey, Laura?”

  “Hello,” she said.

  “I brought you something,” Bridge kneeled down next to her.

  He handed her a plastic bag and looked at Whitton.

  “I wasn’t sure whether this was a good idea or not, but I decided it couldn’t do any harm.”

  Laura opened the bag and her eyes widened. Inside was a small fluffy koala bear. She held it to her nose – kissed it and for the first time in days a smile appeared on her face.

  “What do you say, baby?” Smith said.

  “Thank you,” Laura said, her eyes fixed on the cuddly k
oala in her hands.

  “Do you want something to drink?” Smith asked Bridge.

  “A cup of coffee would be great,” Bridge replied. “And would you mind getting dressed? I don’t think I can bear to look at those skinny white legs of yours.”

  “Come through to the kitchen,” Smith said. “I’ll go and put some clothes on.”

  They left Laura in front of the TV. Whitton and Bridge sat down at the table while Smith went upstairs to get dressed.

  He returned a short while later dressed in a pair of jeans and an old Pink Floyd T-Shirt.

  “How are things at work?” he asked Bridge.

  “Dead,” Bridge replied. “A couple of robberies in the High Street, that’s about the size of it. Did you hear about the murder over in Leeds?”

  “I haven’t been keeping up to date with the news,” Smith replied.

  “Me neither,” Whitton added. “We’ve been a bit preoccupied with Laura.”

  “A woman was found dead in a graveyard outside a church,” Bridge told them. “Missing her head.”

  “Oh my God,” Whitton said.

  “They found it fifty feet away,” Bridge added.

  Smith made some coffee and put it on the table. “That’s Leeds’ problem. I could do without headless women to investigate, thank you very much.”

  “How are you doing?” Whitton asked Bridge. “How’s your Mum coping without your Dad?”

  Bridge’s father had succumbed to cancer. Bridge had returned home from Australia just in time. He got to spend a few more hours with his Dad before he passed away.

  “I’m still a bit numb I think,” he said. “It hasn’t really sunk in, but I have no regrets. There was nothing I left unsaid with the old man. My Mum is doing fine. She’s putting on a brave face and she misses the old bugger like mad but she’s a tough one and she’ll get through it. I’ve been popping in every day.”

  “Let us know if there’s anything we can do,” Whitton offered.

  “When are you coming back to work?” Bridge asked them both.

  “Soon,” Smith replied rather vaguely.

  “We’ve been told to take as long as we need,” Whitton added. “Laura still has a long road ahead of her after what happened, and I don’t want to leave her on her own.”