Mind Whispers
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER BY GERARD BLAY
Available from Amazon and all good bookshops.
ISBN 9780995491700
.... She pressed the remote on her key fob and waited in the gloom as the garage door rumbled open before she entered and brought the door back down behind her. She sat in her VW Golf, leaving the car door open. The car's interior was immaculately maintained to the point of obsession - CDs, pens, a torch, an unopened packet of gum, tissues, sunglasses, all neatly stowed and not a speck of dust in sight.
Janet pushed the ignition key home, and set the engine running. The time, '6:20', gleamed in bright red digits from the dashboard clock. Her eyes were cold and soulless, as if the light of life had already been extinguished long before the carbon monoxide set about its work. She calmly placed her head against the headrest as the deadly gas gathered and poured in through the open door, overwhelming her red blood cells one by one. Her eyelids grew heavy as the noxious fumes starved her body of oxygen, and pushed her ever deeper into the clutches of unconsciousness. ...
'6:45 A.M.' FLASHED UP on the small screen, and Dan Meeks' alarm sprang to life. Without opening an eye, he swung his arm across the pillow and hit the off button, heaving a relieved sigh as silence was restored. He rubbed his eyes and reached for the mug on his bedside table, swirling its contents around in an attempt to remix the misty slick of milk that had formed on the surface of his previous night's coffee. Meeks sat up to take a sip as he stared at the magnolia walls of the one-bedroom flat into which life and circumstance had downsized him. It had always been his intention to invest in something larger, but the simplicity that this new lifestyle afforded him had become quite appealing.
The room contained no framed photos of friends or loved ones, no plants, no pictures. In fact, there was nothing that could be described as fancy or non-functional, just the bare essentials. There was no sign of a woman's touch, and with his job leaving him little time for socialising, the situation didn't look like it would be changing any time soon. As for family, Meeks had minimal contact with his parents, who had failed to conceal their disappointment and viewed his decision to spurn their offer of taking over the reins of the family farm in the Yorkshire Dales as nothing short of a betrayal. Instead, Meeks, who had always displayed an aversion to all aspects of discipline during his school days, due in part to his strict upbringing, had somewhat ironically gone on to enforce the laws of the land as a police officer. His younger brother, however, whose academic abilities appeared to have excused him from his parents' expectations, had been given their blessing to pursue his chosen career as a doctor. As a result of this sequence of events and the tension that it had created, Meeks rarely ventured north to visit his parents. Their infrequent meetings were punctuated by awkward silences and concluded with hollow promises of more frequent contact. The lack of familial affection, together with his failed marriage, which had come up short against the demands of his career, had instilled in Meeks a high degree of emotional self-sufficiency. Admittedly, as his career had progressed, and Meeks had risen through the ranks to detective inspector, his parents' attitude towards his career choice had mellowed. But for Meeks, who found it difficult to build bridges, there remained more than a mere geographical distance separating him and his parents.
Hauling himself to his feet, he stretched the sleep from his legs with each step as he plodded wearily into the bathroom. For a man of forty-seven years of age, he had kept himself in remarkably good shape, with little or no fat on his six foot two inch muscular frame. He pushed the button and stepped into the inviting flow of warm water. Moments later a pulse of cold water hit his body. He gasped as his senses were brought sharply into focus, and as rapidly as it had vanished, the warm water returned. His plumber had explained the cause of this idiosyncrasy, and had offered to fit the part that would remedy the situation, but Meeks had come to accept the faulty boiler's side-effect as part of his wake-up routine. He dropped his head forward to let the heat of the water chase the chill from his head, and listened to the drumming of the water on the shower tray.
The faint glow of the sun was barely visible on the horizon, its rays struggling to break through the cloak of darkness that still enveloped London, as Meeks emerged from his flat, car keys in one hand, slice of toast in the other. His breath mixed with the bitterly cold air to form clouds of condensation which hung in the air, marking his progress down the steps to the front of the three storey block of flats, before drifting off on the gentle breeze.
Meeks was always the first to arrive in the morning, preferring to ease himself into the working day with a cup of coffee as he caught up on his paperwork while the office came to life around him. By the time Detective Sergeant Pat Solari strolled into the office, Meeks had already downed two coffees and done a good hour's work at his desk.
The two of them were old friends, having worked together for a few years in Uniform before Meeks had made the switch to CID and then on to SO15. It was Meeks who had recommended Solari for the position of detective sergeant in SO15 when the vacancy had arisen in his department several years later. At thirty-six, Solari was eleven years Meeks' junior, and looked up to Meeks in more ways than one. "Morning, Guv. Good weekend?" asked Solari, the ketchup from his bacon sandwich oozing out towards its edges as he bit into it. Meeks grunted in answer, engrossed in the paperwork on the table in front of him.
"Anything exciting?" mumbled Solari through a mouthful of bread and bacon.
"Just looking through the Jamieson file again."
"Still bugging you, isn't it?" said Solari as he lowered himself into his seat.
On the surface Meeks came over as laid-back, but deep down the fact that it looked as if he would never solve the Jamieson case was a thorn in his side. He took it personally, just as he took most things personally. Sure, this wouldn't have been the first case he had failed to solve, and it was by no means the most heinous crime that he had investigated either, but something about the Jamieson case troubled him like no other before.
"Something just doesn't sit right with this one . . . It's not just me," he mused, taking Solari's silence as tacit disagreement.
"Some of the people around Jamieson could see that something didn't add up too, and so could Uniform. They obviously picked up a whiff of a terrorist threat in the note he left, otherwise this file wouldn't be sitting on my desk, would it?"
"I reckon they just used the fact that he'd mentioned the Chancellor of the Exchequer in that note to palm a dead-end case off onto us, and reduce their caseload. I don't see why the Major Investigation Team couldn't have handled it. Anyway, you've got to admit Guv, the note Jamieson left was just gibberish."
"It seemed to be, but I've still got this nagging feeling we're missing something here. Jamieson obviously knew what it meant, maybe he didn't think he'd need to spell it out."
"Then why leave a note at all? If he really was onto something that he thought was so important, why didn't he just tell someone before killing himself? And why bother leaving a note that nobody would understand?"
"Maybe it's not meant to be understood by everyone . . . Or maybe he did tell someone, but just told the wrong person. Maybe he didn't kill himself."
"That's a lot of maybes, Guv." ..........
