Deep Black Lies
Deep Black Lies
CJ Carver
Copyright © 2020 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 2020 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
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Print ISBN 978-1-913419-23-3
Contents
Praise for CJ Carver
Also by CJ Carver
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
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
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
A note from the publisher
Love crime, thriller and mystery books?
You will also enjoy:
Praise for CJ Carver
‘A terrific page-turner’
Harlan Coben
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‘Solid gold’
Lee Child
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‘A gripping thriller, perfect for fans of Lee Child and Mason Cross’
The Guardian
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‘A top-notch thriller writer. Carver is one of the best’
Simon Kernick
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‘A page-turning thrill’
Mick Herron
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‘Don’t expect to sleep, because this is unputdownable’
Frost Magazine
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‘Draws you in and keeps you on tenterhooks all the way to the end’
Waterstones Bookseller
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‘One of the best thriller writers working today’
Tom Harper, former CWA Chairman
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‘Exciting, frightening, plenty of suspense… an exceptional first mystery’
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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‘Gorgeously written… dazzlingly well-realised’
St. Petersburg Times
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‘Powerful writing, a gripping plot and a unique setting… outstanding’
The Mystery and Thriller Club
* * *
‘One of the most riveting thrillers of recent years’
New Zealand Times
Also by CJ Carver
THE HARRY HOPE SERIES
Deep Black Lies
Cold Echo
THE DAN FORRESTER SERIES
Spare Me The Truth
Tell Me A Lie
Know Me Now
THE JAY MCCAULAY SERIES
Gone Without Trace
Back With Vengeance
The Honest Assassin
THE INDIA KANE SERIES
Blood Junction
Black Tide
OTHER NOVELS
Over Your Shoulder
Beneath The Snow
Dead Heat
The Snow Thief
1
The last thing Harry Hope expected as he walked up Gloucester Street at 6.15pm on a chill spring evening was to be knifed. He’d heard the footsteps behind him, padding swiftly, and assumed they belonged to a worker hurrying home at the end of the day. When he felt the man’s hand on his shoulder he honestly believed it was someone he knew catching him up, perhaps a friend wanting to say hello and ask him out for a pint.
He didn’t feel any danger, his instincts lulled by his routine evening walk to his car, a walk he must have done a thousand times. He didn’t take in the drizzle dampening the Georgian buildings of Bath, or see the porticoed entrance just ahead because, as usual, his mind was taken up with the clients he’d seen through the day. The depressed teenager, the sad divorcé, the obese woman desperate to lose weight.
The one that had hit him hardest was the loving husband and father who’d just discovered that his three children, all now university students, were not his own but his wife’s lover’s. It had made Harry think about his own three kids. Like most fathers he assumed they were his, but how would he know for sure without a paternity test? And would he actually want to know if one or, God forbid, all of them had been sired by another man?
He may be divorced but even so. He loved his children fiercely and would do pretty much anything for them. Talk about opening a can of worms. Harry couldn’t get his patient out of his mind. The poor man hadn’t just been cuckolded, but betrayed on a monumental scale. Little wonder he was feeling homicidal. Harry sighed, thinking he would probably feel like killing someone too.
‘You…’ The man’s voice was low and hard, breaking through Harry’s thoughts, and at the same time his hand yanked Harry backwards.
Shocked, Harry lost his balance, stumbled to one side. At the same time, he saw the flash of metal slice past his waist. A blade gleamed in the streetlights. A knife. The man had tried to knife him.
Harry didn’t hesitate.
With all his strength he thrust himself to the side, driving his elbow into his attacker’s midriff, using his shoulder to punch his attacker off balance. They fell together, Harry on top and delivering a vicious blow with his fist straight into the man’s face. He felt the crunch of snapping cartilage followed by the rush of warm liquid that he knew was blood. The man cried out but Harry had no intention of pausing, not with a knife around, and he punched the man again, and again.
Footsteps hammered. Voices shouted.
‘Hey, stop! Stop!’
Harry
felt himself being heaved up but his adrenaline was still surging and he lashed out at the person hanging on to his arm.
‘Harry, stop! It’s me!’
Harry hauled himself under control. ‘Doug?’ he gasped.
‘What’s going on?’ Doug demanded. Doug was a fellow psychologist at the Wellbeing Centre. He was helping Harry’s attacker to his feet. The young man was clutching his nose, which was pouring blood. Early twenties, jeans, sneakers, grey hoody. He was watching Harry with such loathing, Harry found it hard not to recoil.
‘He had a knife.’ Harry’s breathing was choppy and shallow as the adrenaline began to ebb. ‘He tried to knife me.’
‘A knife?’ Doug stepped back.
‘No knife,’ the attacker mumbled. ‘He just went for me. No reason. He’s crazy. He should be locked up.’
‘Liar.’ Anger made Harry bunch his fists again. ‘Turn out your pockets.’
‘No way.’ The young man tried to back away but Harry grabbed his hoody in his left hand and raised his right fist threateningly. ‘Do it.’
Trembling, sweat sheening his face, the young man emptied his pockets onto the ground. Harry dragged him aside. Looked down to see a wallet, a set of keys and a balled-up tissue. ‘And the knife,’ Harry told him.
‘I already said!’ The loathing Harry had seen had vanished beneath a blanket of fright that made the young man’s voice wobble. ‘I haven’t got a bloody knife, okay?’
‘Just do it,’ Harry snarled.
‘Pat me down, then! See if I’m wrong!’
Harry pushed him in the chest and when the young man lurched backwards, offering no resistance, moved behind him and began searching for the knife. Nothing in his pockets. Nothing tucked in his waistband. Harry ducked down and ran his hands up and down the man’s legs, his arms, his spine.
Shit, he thought. I can’t believe this.
No knife.
2
Harry was looking around, trying to see where the young man had thrown the knife, when Doug spoke up.
‘Shall I call the police?’
Harry scowled. Where was the sodding knife?
‘Harry?’ Doug had his phone out.
Heart thudding, Harry made to pick up the young man’s wallet, wanting to see some identification, but his attacker was faster and ducked down and snatched it up. For a second, their eyes met. The man’s face was already swelling, blood pouring from his nose and down his chin. And then he spun on his heel and ran.
He was fast. Much faster than Harry. And he was young. Harry used to play rugby but too long ago for it to be any use today. He didn’t stop though. Anger spurred him on. He charged along Rivers Street, following knife-man as he swung right, heading into town, pounding down the hill past the Queensberry Hotel. He nearly lost him on the next crossroads but a woman’s yelp directed him down the cut-through past the Assembly Rooms where, in the distance, knife-man was pelting hell for leather.
Harry kept running until he lost sight of his quarry at the bottom of Bartlett Street. Heart pounding, breath hot in his throat, he paused, scanning the handfuls of tourists, the street filled with rush hour traffic, searching for any movement that seemed out of place.
‘Harry,’ a man gasped behind him.
Harry spun round to see Doug bent double, panting, his face puce. ‘You lost him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Bugger,’ Doug wheezed. ‘God, I really must do more exercise. I’m so bloody unfit, I can’t tell you.’
‘Thanks for helping out.’ Then Harry frowned. ‘I thought you were in Zurich this week.’
‘Symposium was cancelled. I was taking Mum and Dad to Patrick’s for their wedding anniversary. You know, that restaurant–’
‘Yes, I know Patrick’s.’
Harry hadn’t dined there, and although Doug was a fellow psychologist Harry decided not to tell him that he only knew the place because he was giving their pastry chef some relationship therapy.
‘I parked up Lansdown,’ Doug continued, ‘and was walking down when I saw two men fighting. Didn’t realise it was you. I didn’t know you were quite so, er… physical.’ He gave Harry an appraising look.
‘The result of a misspent youth,’ Harry admitted. ‘I got into a bit of a rough gang who taught me a few tricks.’
Doug’s eyebrows rose. ‘Rather more than tricks from what I saw.’
Harry wasn’t going to go into that period of his life with Doug. He’d carried a huge burden of guilt for something that happened when he was a child, and had turned into an insufferable teenager, running wild with the wrong crowd and ignoring his long-suffering parents’ pleas. It was only thanks to one of their friends, a psychologist at the Royal United Hospital, that he was pulled back from the brink. Yet that became the bedrock for his future in psychotherapy, underpinned by a driving urge to atone by helping others.
Harry ran a hand over his head. His sweat was starting to cool, his pulse returning to normal. Doug, however, was still wheezing. Harry had to admit he was surprised at Doug’s intervention. He might be a big, gruff man but appearances were deceptive. Over the years Harry had come to see Doug as placid, a man of trust, but also a bit of a wimp, if he was being honest. Like Dave, Harry’s ex-best friend who, even though he was a qualified judo instructor, still hid upstairs whenever Harry appeared. Not that he made a habit of going to his ex-wife’s home, but occasionally he had to go there to pick up the kids.
‘Did he really attack you?’ Doug was frowning. ‘I have to admit that it looked as though…’ He trailed off, hesitating.
‘As though what?’ Harry hadn’t expected the words to come out quite so aggressively but he wasn’t surprised, considering what he’d just gone through.
‘Well, you were punching him, weren’t you?’
‘Yes. Because he attacked me.’
Doug flicked his eyes up and down Harry’s burly frame. Harry got the message. The young man might have been tall but he hadn’t had Harry’s muscular bulk. He’d been like a greyhound to Harry’s bull mastiff.
‘Are you going to report it?’ Doug asked anxiously. ‘Because if you are, I’m not sure what I should say… I mean, I didn’t see a knife. I just saw you on the ground, hitting him.’
Great. Knowing Doug, who was a stickler for protocol, he’d probably have him done for assault.
‘No, I won’t report it,’ Harry said wearily, but back at home – after searching Gloucester Street for the knife to no avail – he changed his mind.
3
‘You’re saying I’m one of how many knife attacks?’
‘It’s not me saying it, Harry. It’s the news.’
Jessie brought out her phone and tapped. Turned the screen to him.
Man attacked with knife while sitting on a bench in Bath.
Youth pulls knife on cyclist in Weston.
She tapped some more.
Victim describes ‘terrifying knife attack’ outside his judo school.
Harry looked at the photograph of the third victim, a fit-looking man wearing a judo kimono. Definitely not Dave. Besides, if Dave had been attacked, Harry would have heard about it.
‘They don’t look related,’ he said, trying not to be distracted by Jessie’s perfume. Or the way her jumper clung so agreeably to her. She was wearing a vibrantly coloured scarf, skinny jeans and ankle boots, and looked as delicious as a rosy apple just plucked from the tree. Sometimes, like now, he couldn’t believe his luck. Not just that they’d met, but that she seemed to like him. And he liked her back. Lots.
‘But three knifings in a fortnight?’ She gave him a droll look. His ex, Nicole, didn’t do droll. She didn’t tease him, tell jokes or have sex anywhere but the bedroom. Jessie had been a revelation. They’d made love in front of the fire in the sitting room, on the sofa, in the kitchen, on the stairs and in the shower. When summer eventually arrived, he had no doubt she’d incorporate the garden. Was her adventurousness to do with her being Australian? Or was it because she was simply a vibrant young
woman in love with life?
He’d never had such a generous lover before and now he wondered about the power of culture and how it affected sexual development and relationships. Social factors were of vital importance too. What were her parents like?
He’d met Jessie last year, when one of his clients, a seventeen-year-old boy, had gone missing. She worked for Eddie’s Farm, a charity that turned difficult kids around and gave them a taste of a different life through farming and physical achievement. Back then Jessie had been a fund-raiser cum general dogsbody, and the instant they’d met, he’d been bowled over by her.