The Deadly Echoes by MJ White

Author:MJ White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hera Books
Published: 2024-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-EIGHT

LANEHAN

PC Steph Lanehan was on her way back to Police HQ for a well-earned cuppa and ten minutes’ break when the call came in. The apologetic tone of Sergeant Tim Brinton made her heart plummet.

‘We’ve had a report from a member of the public. They say they’ve found a body hanging in Evernam Woods. I wish I could send someone else, Steph, but we’re stretched too far. And you’re closest. Can you get over there, please?’

It was inevitable. She’d dared to hope for a comparatively quiet day after the recent horrors she’d witnessed. She should have known better. It was as if the universe had heard and decided to chuck a spanner at her.

What a bloody week this was turning out to be.

A whole load of crap and more work than anyone could realistically deal with, and that was before the grisly discovery she and Rilla Davis had been first on the scene for: four slashed-throat corpses, one blood-soaked suspect. Press everywhere now and already condemning South Suffolk Constabulary without bothering to see what she and her colleagues were all doing.

It had been all over the news this morning, even the local radio featuring a report on it as she’d driven into Ipswich to begin her shift. It was the same old guff, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear. The local bumpkins line being bandied about again, like it wasn’t a kick in the guts to every exhausted officer working their arses off trying to deal with a multiple murder case on top of everything else.

Now it was four p.m., but to Lanehan’s weary body and mind, it felt like midnight.

She’d hardly slept since the discovery of the crime scene – the worst of her long police career: the images of the horrifically injured men burned on her mind like a sudden sunburst on a retina. She could still see them lying there when she closed her eyes: a grotesque, immovable tableau.

And now a hanging?

Would this ever end?

Lanehan was the last person to long for retirement, but her body ached for it today. With twenty years of service under her belt, she was still years away, but the appeal of not having to deal with the worst of society was strengthening by the day.

It threatened to break the surface of her carefully curated narrative about her job – that everything was okay, that the shit was just part of the joy. Even Fred had noticed, and her husband was famous for his unquestioning acceptance of her version of events. He’d challenged her in the early hours of the morning when he’d found her pacing the small kitchen of their terraced home, hands shaking.

‘I know you don’t want to hear it, girl, but maybe it’s time to think of leaving.’

‘You’re right,’ she’d returned sharply. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

It had been the end of it then, but how much longer could she dismiss his concerns?

She turned the squad car around in a dusty entrance to a field, heading back along the road she’d just driven, towards the location Brinton had given her.

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