Scare Me To Death Read online

  Scare Me to Death

  CJ Carver

  Copyright © 2021 CJ Carver

  The right of CJ Carver to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2021 by Bloodhound Books.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.bloodhoundbooks.com

  Print ISBN 978-1-913942-41-0

  Contents

  Love crime, thriller and mystery books?

  Praise For CJ Carver

  Also by CJ Carver

  Sixteen years ago

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Sixteen years ago

  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

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Ten days later

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  A note from the publisher

  Love crime, thriller and mystery books?

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  Praise For CJ Carver

  ‘A shocking, complex and beautifully written thriller and another cracker from the pen of bestseller CJ Carver’

  Reader’s Retreat

  ‘CJ Carver can do no wrong. Fabulous. Extremely fabulous. Read this series. It’s the best!’

  Northern Crime

  ‘A fast and ingenious thriller that pits the brilliantly addictive Forrester and Davies against a tense and chillingly real conspiracy… I’m full of admiration’

  Isabelle Grey, author

  ‘This is an extraordinarily tense, clever thriller. Don’t expect to sleep, because this is unputdownable’

  Frost Magazine

  ‘A terrific page-turner. Heart-stopping action and a heroine with guile as well as guts’

  Harlen Coben, author

  ‘Anyone who is a member of a book club should be recommending (Spare Me the Truth) to their fellow readers with great gusto’

  Book Addict Shawn

  ‘Carver gives us strong heroines battling against the odds, fast-moving plots and a strong sense of place. She deservedly won the CWA Debut Dagger for Blood Junction’

  Publishing News

  “I’m so glad this is the first of a series: I want more… and I want it now!’

  Julia Crouch, author

  ‘Fast, smart and furious… it will have you clinging on by your fingertips. CJ Carver is one of the best thriller writers working today’

  Tom Harper, former CWA Chairman

  ‘A complex tale of betrayal and deception. CJ Carver writes with compassion about characters she really cares about’

  Parker Bilal, author

  ‘A top-notch thriller writer. CJ Carver is one of the best’

  Simon Kernick, author

  ‘A high-wire act of a thriller, with a plot as ingeniously constructed as a sudoku puzzle’

  The Lady Magazine

  ‘Powerful writing, a gripping plot and a unique setting… outstanding’

  The Mystery and Thriller Club

  Also by CJ Carver

  THE HARRY HOPE SERIES

  Cold Echo

  Deep Black Lies

  THE LIA SHAN THRILLER

  The Snow Thief

  THE NICK ASHDOWN THRILLER

  Over Your Shoulder

  THE DAN FORRESTER SERIES

  Spare Me The Truth

  Tell Me A Lie

  Know Me Now

  Scare Me To Death

  THE JAY MCCAULAY SERIES

  Gone Without Trace

  Back With Vengeance

  The Honest Assassin

  THE INDIA KANE SERIES

  Blood Junction

  Black Tide

  OTHER NOVELS

  Dead Heat

  Beneath The Snow

  For Steve, with thanks for the opening sentence.

  Sixteen years ago

  There was a girl in my seat. A teenager. Ripped jeans, red tassel top, bangles on both wrists. Auburn hair twisted into a knot. Her hands had been painted with geometric henna designs. She was absorbed in her paperback which, I saw, was the bestseller of the year, The Da Vinci Code.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘But I think this might be my seat.’

  She didn’t look up.

  Even though I knew I hadn’t made a mistake, I double-checked my seat assignment: 27C. Aisle seat towards the rear of the aircraft. Near the rear exits. The safest place to be.

  ‘Anna asif sayidi…’ I’m sorry, sir…

  I backed up for the flight attendant wanting to pass, and tried again, this time moving so that I edged into the girl’s personal space. ‘Hello?’

  She glanced up, obviously irritated at being interrupted. Her eyes were an extraordinary vivid green.

  I showed her my boarding pass. ‘Maybe we’ve been allocated the same seat. If that’s the case…’

  ‘No, no.’ Her irritation immediately gave way to mortification. ‘It’s me, sorry.’ She was already closing her book and getting up. ‘I thought it might be free.’ Sliding out of the seat she glanced over her shoulder. ‘I was trying to get away from my extremely annoying little brother, that’s all. Sorry.’

  Her accent was clear-cut English, and I assumed the small boy with tousled hair the same colour as hers, who’d suddenly appeared over the headrest behind her, was the brother.

  ‘Told you so.’ His face was triumphant. ‘Told you someone would come and kick you out. Now you’ll have to play with me.’ He vanished briefly to return with two toy cars which he proceeded to race along the headrest, making loud vroom-vroom noises. br />
  ‘You’re the Nissan. I’m the Ferrari.’

  The girl gave a long-suffering sigh and rolled her eyes.

  ‘You think that’s a fair race?’ I asked the boy.

  He paused to look at me.

  ‘I’m assuming you’ve got the Nissan 350Z,’ I said. ‘Three and a half litre six-speed manual, naught to sixty in 5.3 seconds?’

  The boy stared at me, round-eyed.

  ‘The Ferrari, however…’ I bent and had a closer look, ‘…is a lot older than the Nissan. It’s the 308 Dino. It does 7.7 seconds naught to sixty. If I were you, I’d have a rethink about which car you’re going to race against.’

  ‘Are you a racing driver?’ he asked. His eyes were the same colour as his sister’s and just as arresting.

  ‘I have raced, yes.’ I didn’t think it wise to tell him that my last race had been in London’s rush hour, chasing a terrorist suspect who’d been hell-bent on attacking the Underground with ricin poison.

  The boy turned the Nissan over and looked at its underside. ‘You’d have this one? Seriously?’

  ‘It may not look as sporty, but the performance is actually pretty good.’ I held out my hand. The boy put the Nissan in my palm. I don’t know what it was, whether it was his solemn expression, reminding me of my own boyhood and my passion for cars, or if it was simply because I was exhausted after the past few days and needed a mental break, but I moved to take the empty seat next to him, raising my eyebrows at the girl to ask if that would be okay.

  The girl looked astonished, then delighted. ‘Be my guest.’ She dropped into my seat fast, burying herself back in her book in case I might change my mind.

  As I made to settle next to the boy, the woman on his right, sitting next to the window, sprang up. ‘Bub, get back into your own seat right now.’

  ‘But, Mum…’

  ‘This gentleman shouldn’t be hassled into doing what you guys want.’

  ‘He offered!’ the girl protested at the same time as the boy wailed, ‘Mummy, but he wants to play! He’s a racing driver!’

  ‘Okay, Josh, Bubbles, just cool it. Both of you.’

  Both kids fell silent. I turned to see the man I took to be their father studying me. Sandy hair, freckles and laughter lines edged a pair of eyes the same colour as his kids’. He had the seat across the aisle, which meant the family would have been in the same row if the daughter hadn’t debunked.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ I told him. ‘Honestly.’

  He stared a second longer before giving a shrug. ‘Your funeral.’

  ‘Yesss!’ Josh punched the air as I sank next to him and gave him his first lesson in the technique of motor racing.

  ‘What’s the most important quality the would-be driver should have?’ I asked.

  ‘To drive really fast.’

  I looked into his shining face. ‘Absolutely. But it’s more than that. And it’s a quality you already have, which is great enthusiasm. Next, you need courage. And mastery over your nerves…’

  As flight attendants began closing overhead lockers and preparing for pushback, we played with our cars, the boy asking me questions while I did my best to answer them, and after a few minutes I noticed the girl had risen and was watching us over the headrest. ‘Are there any female racing drivers?’

  ‘Some of the best drivers are women.’

  ‘Ha!’ The father snorted.

  I ignored him. ‘Check out Sabine Schmitz. She won twenty-four hours of Nürburgring. Twice. And what about Danica Patrick? She’s one of the best NASCAR drivers around and the only woman to win an IndyCar Series race.’

  ‘Girl power.’ Bubbles grinned at me, raising a hand for a high-five. We clapped palms. Everyone smiled. Inside my chest, I felt muscles beginning to relax. This was just what I needed. To be part of a normal, happy world, with normal, happy people.

  Usually I keep myself to myself. I blend in and make sure I don’t do anything that anyone might remember. But I’d just finished an intense week and not having to think about it felt as good as a holiday on a tropical island. Eight bombers had bombed five places in Marrakech last week and I’d been brought in because one of those bombers had been British. The Moroccans hadn’t taken my appearance kindly and although to my face they’d been perfectly polite, they’d been purposely unhelpful. Even though I’m known for being excessively even-tempered, by the end of the week I was anything but. I could have happily strangled the lot of them.

  With a final check from the flight attendants making sure we were buckled up, our tables stowed away, we began rolling down the runway and lifting into the sky.

  Minutes later – we were climbing through three thousand feet or so – the plane fell suddenly straight down and gave a shudder.

  Someone let out a small scream.

  For a moment, I thought we might have suffered a bird strike but then the oxygen masks dropped and at the same time, I smelled smoke.

  Quickly I snapped my mask into place. Checked that Josh and his parents had also put theirs on. I couldn’t check on their daughter, Bubs, but since it appeared she’d pulled down her mask, I had to assume she was okay too. Josh looked at me, pale-faced and frightened. I winked.

  Smoke began to fill the cabin. Acrid, filled with chemicals, it swept from the front like a black tidal wave. Somewhere, wires were melting. A fire was taking hold.

  My pulse increased. This didn’t look good. I forced myself to concentrate on my breathing. In. Pause. Out.

  The intercom came on. A female voice told everyone to keep calm, assuring us that we were returning to the airport, that we would be landing safely and that the fire emergency services were already standing by. She sounded breezy and confident and I promised myself that if we came through this okay, I’d shake her hand because there was no way she’d know any of that. There’d been no time. She was improvising. Doing her job.

  The smoke thickened until I could no longer see Josh’s mum or dad, Josh or my feet. If the fire had started in the avionics bay, which I suspected, then the pilots would be in an even worse situation. They would have donned their full-face masks straight away, but if they couldn’t see their instruments…

  I willed myself to keep calm but my heart was hammering, sweat springing over my body.

  I thought of my parents. Pictured us on the skiff sailing across Plymouth harbour, Mum’s hair flying, Dad’s eyes alight. I didn’t want them to hear I’d died. I didn’t want to die either. I was only twenty-four. I had my life ahead of me.

  My mouth turned dry as the flight attendant began to tell passengers they needed to prepare. As everyone assumed the brace position I turned to Josh, made sure his seat belt was as low and tight as it would go. He couldn’t reach the seat in front of him, which meant he had to put his arms around the back of his legs, his head on his knees.

  Everyone fell quiet. Totally silent.

  Seconds ticked past.

  I checked Josh again, pushing his head down a little more, making sure his knees were pressed together.

  Engines screaming, the plane made a sickening lurch to the side.

  I leaned close to Josh. ‘If anything happens, I want you to hold on to my hand and I’ll get you and your sister, your mum and dad–’

  My words were snatched from me as we ploughed into the ground.

  1

  Present day

  DC Lucy Davies stepped off the train at Bristol Temple Meads, one eye on the flow of passengers pouring along the platform, the other on the man in her peripheral vision who was walking four yards to her left. She’d first seen him when she’d boarded the train at Middlesbrough. Dark blue jeans and black leather jacket. Thickset. Strong-looking. She’d been walking along the platform when she’d glanced around to find him behind her. Their eyes had met for a split second. She wasn’t sure if she’d imagined his flinch, but her nerves tightened when he came and sat in the same carriage. It was the studious way he avoided looking at her that made her spine tingle.

  Was he a problem?
>
  A biting wind cut her cheeks as she approached the stairwell leading beneath the tracks and to the exit. She wished she could have driven to Bristol – she would have felt safer in a car – but since her Corsa had a faulty water pump and was with the mechanic, she’d been forced to use public transport. As she walked, Lucy willed herself not to look at the man keeping pace with her.

  You’re paranoid, she told herself. Just because he resembles the man that kidnapped you last year doesn’t mean anything. Yes, I know his family cursed you, that his mother swore to have you killed, but it doesn’t mean that every solid-looking, dark-haired bloke is out to get you.