Trap Door: the creepiest psychological suspense you will read this year Read online

  Trap Door

  Dreda Say Mitchell

  Copyright © 2020 Dreda Say Mitchell

  The right of to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance 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 inwriting 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 978-1-913419-25-7

  Praise for Dreda Say Mitchell

  ‘As good as it gets.’ Lee Child

  ‘A truly original voice.’ Peter James

  ‘Zippy, twisty plot…and a bevy of memorable supporting goodies and baddies.’ The Sunday Times

  ‘Thrilling.’ Sunday Express Books of the Year

  ‘Awesome tale from a talented writer.’ The Sun

  ‘Fast paced and full of twists and turns.’ Crime Scene Magazine

  ‘Yet death is never a wholly welcome guest.’

  Faust, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

  Prologue

  How do you clear up after you’ve murdered someone?

  That’s what ran through the killer’s mind as he turned his head away from the body. He trembled with shock, fear and an acidic horror about what had happened.

  Thirty minutes had come and gone since he’d passed through the curtain of fire that divides those who have taken a life from those who have not. He’d already learned in that brief time that it didn’t matter whether the death was accidental, what your original intent was, or how sorry you were afterwards. It didn’t matter how many times you thought things through again and again, desperately wishing and pleading with yourself, ‘If only, if only…’

  It was too late for soul-searching regret. There was no way back through the curtain.

  The body was slumped in the driver’s seat of a German model 29 Nash saloon. One of a number of classic cars that sit side by side in this purpose-built garage complex. Ex-wives and girlfriends claimed the victim cared more about his shiny boys’ toys than he did about people. He’d certainly spared no expense housing them.

  The gears in the killer’s mind turned, finally piecing together how to answer his horrific question. How ironic that it was the victim’s obsessions that led the killer to the point of understanding how to cover up this unspeakable act.

  The victim had installed sealed tanks of specially formulated fuel to pump into his much-loved vehicles. And that meant when the place was set on fire, at some stage it was going to erupt like a volcano and destroy everything in its path. But how would you know when that moment would come? That you’d left enough time to run and run from the scene without the fire catching you too?

  The killer turned back to the car. Peered inside. The dead man looked serene and unmarked as if he was having a quiet nap. At rest, his head tilted to one side. The fatal wound to his temple oozed something nasty through the congealed blood. If the blow had been anywhere else on his body this man would still be alive, probably raging and lashing out. But the temple is the thinnest and most vulnerable part of the skull. A thumping blow is all it takes to crack it.

  The killer splashed petrol over the body until the clothes were soaked through. Did the same to the interior and bodywork of the car. Lashings more poured over the floor and on the fixtures and fittings in the building. Petrol everywhere, the place stank to high heaven. He doused one of the many ‘no smoking’ signs in the greasy liquid from his jerry can. Of course smoking was strictly forbidden in this building, so how to account for the inferno that was to come? He put down his can and ran back to the house.

  There was so much to remember, so much to easily forget.

  In a bureau in the office he found what he was looking for, a box of Havana cigars. Took one out. Put the flame of the lighter to it but it didn’t catch because of his fumbling fingers. He tried again. And again. He shook so badly he was seconds away from falling apart. Finally, finally the tip of the cigar sizzled as it glowed orange-red-hot. He placed the cigar to his lips and inhaled. A hacking spluttering cough erupted from his chest. But then your life is never the same after you’ve smashed someone’s skull in.

  The killer choked his way down the cigar until it was half its length. Outside, he chucked the Havana not too far from one of the garage’s opened windows. The investigators would find it. The killer already had an explanation for that. The dead man was smoking a cigar in the garage and threw it out of the window. What an idiot. Case closed.

  Or perhaps the case wouldn’t be closed. Maybe he should have placed a tissue around the end of the cigar before he put his mouth over it? He’d seen the TV docs and the grisly true crime shows where forensic science seems to have X-ray eyes.

  There was so much to remember, so much to easily forget.

  Standing by the door, he found a classic car exhibition brochure and rolled it up. Dipped it in petrol. Took the lighter out of his pocket. Glanced around the building for one final check, set the brochure on fire and then threw it onto the fuel-soaked floor. The flames skipped and danced towards the saloon like a child running on a beach. The car was soon consumed in fire, the dead man’s face blistering and creasing in the flames. It was time to go before the whole place went up.

  He ran out of the door, across the grounds, greedily gulping in the fresh country air, running through what he was going to say to the police.

  ‘When I smelt smoke I rushed around to the front of the house and saw the garage in flames. I tried to get in and rescue him but the heat was so intense I was driven back. That’s how I got the cuts and bruises on my face. I told him a thousand times not to smoke in there but he wouldn’t listen, he just wouldn’t listen.’

  He stopped abruptly. Frantically patted his pockets. Where was his lighter? Behind him, the garage windows were already in motion with leaping orange and yellow flames. In his head, he heard the police saying, ‘Our team recovered the charred remains of a brass lighter from the scene. We’ve established that it had your name engraved on it, along with the words ‘Las Vegas’. We understand you were holidaying there last year. Have you any idea how that item came to be in the garage?’

  He ran back. Pulled open the door and was thrown onto his back by the rush of heat and fuel-scented flames. But he struggled to his feet, pulled his jacket over his head and plunged into the inferno and headed towards where he’d started the fire. It didn’t take him long to find the lighter. The sweat soaking through his shirt exposed a brass lump in its top pocket. He hadn’t dropped it at all. It was there all along.

  He never heard the explosion. He only saw blue, white, a flash of lightning tear across the garage from one side to another. He somersaulted through the air like a leaf twisting in the wind, crashed hard into a burning wall before sliding down onto the floor below. Molten drops of fuel rained down upon him, burning holes in his clothes and flesh. But he felt no pain, only numbing disbelief as his body began to smoke and smoulder. He was inches from the door that the blast had slammed shut, and was able to lift his arm and rest his hand on the door handle. But there was no life left in his fingers to pull it open and crawl out. His arm slowly slid and dropped away.

  In a mom
ent of searing clarity as death closed in on him, there was an unearthly relief at what was happening. This was the right turn of events. Because he knew in the long run, he’d never be able to cope with life on this side of the curtain between those who’ve killed someone and those who have not.

  And in death there’s nothing to remember and nothing to forget.

  One

  I’ll do anything. ANYTHING. I’m facing the abyss and don’t have a choice. That’s why I sit with crippling desperation in this trendy coffee bar, an island of stillness among the rushing parade of Londoners blurring in and around me. Waiting for a stranger who has the power to yank my life back to safe ground or shove me deeper into the hell my life has become.

  ‘Rachel?’

  The hesitant-yet-commanding voice catches me unaware, even though I’m expecting him. I’m up and out of the chair with such force the top layer of my latte splashes across the table. Idiot! Idiot! Idiot! What a way to start a job interview.

  My hand scrambles towards the solitary napkin, but he gets there first, mopping up with a rhythmic flicked efficiency of his wrist that has the table back to right in no time at all. I feel such a first-grade fool the honourable thing to do would be to hit the exit and keep walking. But someone in my situation doesn’t have space for chivalrous ideals like honour. Ideals are out, facts are in. And the fact is I need this job. Badly.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’ The required apology sounds high, too breathless. What happened to the laboured confidence I practiced, this way and that, in front of the mirror in my room for a full hour this morning? Gone the same way as the coffee; soaked up into oblivion.

  ‘No, it’s me who should be apologising,’ he says with an easy smile, ‘for asking you to conduct an interview in a café. I didn’t want you seeing my office with the plumber around fixing the leak. The last thing I want is for you to think you’re joining a company that’s disorganised.’

  Michael Barrington stretches out his hand, which I quickly take, praying he doesn’t feel the sticky sweat on my palm. He’s the CEO of a boutique-style management consulting company. A Steve Jobs wannabe in his black polo neck and black pants, hair flicked and buffed back to perfection, a face groomed and moisturised to within an inch of its life. I suspect he’s closer to thirty-five than my twenty-eight. He doesn’t look it.

  But it doesn’t matter what he does or doesn’t look like. Priority number one is snagging the job he’s interviewing me for. I have to get it. If I don’t I’m facing catastrophe with a capital C. My life is a house of cards teetering on the edge of tumbling down. Please help me, I silently plead with this oh-so-perfect man who holds my salvation in his hands.

  When the pleasantries are out of the way, my nerves twist into a medieval torture device when he pulls out and studies my CV or resumé or whatever the business buzzword for it is these days. Is he impressed or not? I can’t tell because he shifts the gears of his expression into neutral. The truth is, my work history has been nipped and tucked with fibs and exaggerations. We all do it. Pretend the time we helped Mum organise the garden shed was our first attempt at a start-up. Here’s another truth – I’m not really qualified to be a management consultant. Correction: really. I’m not qualified to be a management consultant. That’s not me being modest like many women are prone to do. Hand on heart, I’ve never done the job or even one similar. I’ve made my work history very long, hoping he’ll become bored before he figures out my employment record is a roll call of bartending, delivering pizzas and the annoying robotic ‘I want to talk to you about your accident’ intrusive voice from a call centre.

  Michael doesn’t look up from his reading as he asks, ‘Tell me, Rachel, how’s Jed?’

  I’m caught off guard. It shows. It’s the last thing I expect Michael to say. Shouldn’t he be hitting me with a firing squad of questions?

  ‘Why do you want this job?’

  ‘What experience do you have?’

  ‘What do you know about this company?’

  Then again, it was Jed who lined me up for this job in the first place. Of all the friends I’d begged for help in finding me proper employment with proper money, Jed was definitely on my ‘won’t come through’ list. When Michael Barrington rang me out of the blue and said Jed had spoken to him, at first I thought it was a sick prank. Then Michael invited me for a coffee and chat and here we are.

  I paste on a smile. Hope it doesn’t make me the spitting image of a creepy clown. Gut breath. Exhale. ‘Jed’s good. Such a great guy. Salt of the earth.’

  Michael carries on reading. ‘Is he still playing in that indie band?’

  ‘I’ve heard his band is pretty good.’ My voice is shaky, losing the perilous thread of confidence I’m clinging on to for dear life.

  Michael’s bark of sudden laughter startles me. Pushes me back in my seat. The couple at the next table look over as if laughter is some type of miracle drug they wouldn’t mind an injection of. ‘You’re joking. They’re amateur hour on speed. Saw them in some fleapit and they sounded like an abattoir on a busy day. They had some dopey girl with blue streaks in her hair on the bass. She couldn’t play a note, even though Jed put coloured tabs on it to show her where her fingers should go.’

  I join in with the laughter, my staccato ha-ha-haing sounding rehearsed. Obviously I don’t let on that I was the dopey girl with the blue clip-ins, standing in for Jed’s regular bassist who’d come down with food poisoning.

  The blue’s long gone. I’m wearing one of two smart suits I own. My weight loss means it swallows me, leaving me the picture of a sad girl playing dress-up. The cuffs of my blouse are tucked up inside so Michael can’t see they’re as frayed as I feel.

  Michael sighs, folds the pages of my CV in half and keeps folding and folding until it’s the size of a postcard. He drops it in his open rucksack. My hopeful heart plummets too.

  His magnetic eyes make contact with mine. ‘I don’t think we need to let that farrago detain us any longer.’

  It’s over. I’m finished. Wish I could cry. My last hope… and I blew it. My life’s over. Over.

  Michael looks baffled. ‘Where are you going?’

  I’m standing, unsteady. Convinced I’m going to tip over. I knew this was a forlorn hope but it was hope, and when you’re in a situation like mine, hope is all you’ve got.

  Michael gestures with his finger for me to retake my seat. But I’ve had enough of this. Want out. I’m sick to death of it all. If I still had my car, which I sold a few months back, I’d do everyone a kindness and crash it into a brick wall at illegal miles an hour.

  But he repeats his gesture and I slump back into the chair.

  Michael settles back. ‘Rachel, it’s time for some home truths.’

  Truths? If he knew the kind of truth I exist in I suspect he’d tell me to exit through the window.

  ‘I’m not very impressed by qualifications and experience,’ he continues, tone measured and even. ‘They can all be invented anyway. I’ve hired superbly qualified guys who couldn’t tie their shoelaces. On the other hand, I’ve had work experience kids who got into the consulting groove in the first couple of days. You just can’t tell, can you?’

  His fingers lock together as he leans forward, his eyes meeting mine. ‘Are you reliable and loyal? Because that’s what matters. I do a lot of confidential and sensitive work for my clients. I can’t afford to employ disloyal and unreliable people. Can’t risk employing anyone who will let the firm down.’

  ‘I’m loyal. Reliable,’ I state with quick-fire assurance. And I am. But I’m not telling the whole truth. There was that summer… Don’t go there. I eject out of the damning past.

  Michael’s got a twinkle that softens his intent stare. ‘And let’s face it, you can overdo the honesty is the only policy mantra. I’m running a business here, not the Sally Army. Sometimes you have to cut a few corners if you want to get on – you get me?’ There’s a smile playing on his lips that bring out deep dimples in his cheeks.

 
; I reach for the lukewarm coffee and gulp it down, soaking through the dryness in my throat.

  Michael studies me for a few seconds. ‘Jed was right to tell me about you. I like you, Rachel. I’ve got a good feeling about you and I trust my good feelings. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to start you off on a one-month contract. Come to the office tomorrow morning and if you pick up the basics over the next four weeks, we can have another chat about giving you something longer term. If not, you’ll still have made a few thousand pounds out of it, plus a grand bonus on top. Would that work for you?’

  I’m stunned. Can’t answer. Thousands? Bonus? Michael’s a money tree with multi-coloured leaves – brown tenners, purple twenties and red fifties blowing in the breeze from his branches. Hell yeah, that works for me. Is this where I make a spectacle of myself by twerking with delight round the tables because I can’t believe it? But there’s a niggling warning at the back of my mind – if it’s too good to be true…

  So, I sombrely say, ‘But my career history doesn’t exactly fit with the job that’s on offer.’ I swallow heavily despite the constriction in my throat. ‘I don’t want to let you down.’

  A steady stare is what I get in return that increases my tension. Makes me want to grab back my honest words, press rewind and start all over again.

  ‘That’s where we disagree,’ he finally tells me. ‘You’ve worked in call centres, which means you know how to talk to clients on the phone. Not only that, but you will have learned the art of persuasion. And if working in a bar isn’t a highly pressurised situation, I don’t know what is.’ His stare deepens. ‘That’s the type of skills I need in my organisation. If you’re up for the challenge, I’ve got the job.’

  A warm heady feeling of appreciation spreads through me. I feel giddy with it. Rachel Jordan, who set out to conquer the world at eighteen but instead ended up piled on the scrap heap of other nothings, has finally been given another chance. This job will not only get me out of my tricky reality but also give me an opportunity to redeem myself. Two birds one stone.