Sanctuary: (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 8) (The Kate Redman Mysteries) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Requiem (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 2)

  A Prescription For Death (The Asharton Manor Mysteries: Book 2) – A Novella

  A Blessing From The Obeah Man

  More books by Celina Grace…

  Hushabye (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 1)

  Imago (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 3)

  Snarl (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 4)

  Chimera (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 5)

  Echo (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 6)

  Creed (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 7)

  Siren (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 9)

  Pulse (A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 10)

  Further Information

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Sanctuary

  A Kate Redman Mystery: Book 8

  Celina Grace

  Sanctuary

  Copyright © 2015 by Celina Grace. All rights reserved.

  First Edition: December 2015

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Prologue

  The sun glittered on the sea, its beams penetrating the translucent blue waters as they broke upon the shore to touch the firm-packed sand below. Waves frilled with white foam hissed and sighed on the beach. They reached up to touch the larger pebbles, the driftwood and the drying seaweed before withdrawing back into the ocean, leaving the uncovered sand wet and gleaming for a second before the water sank away.

  The body lay face downwards, arms lax and loose. An observer from the clifftop path, up above the beach, might have supposed the man to be an early morning sunbather, except sunbathers did not usually lie with their faces buried in the wet sand, and they were not usually clothed in ragged jeans and faded black T-shirts. If this hypothetical observer had descended the path onto the beach, and clashed and rattled over the pebbles before gaining the firmer ground of the sand, they would have seen the greyness of the exposed skin of the arms and the curious crab perched on one loosely-curled hand.

  But there was no observer there that morning. There was no one on the beach at all, save for a crowd of seagulls wheeling overhead. The waves receded further as the tide went out, leaving the sad remains of what had once been a person lying alone, flung upon the sand like a piece of detritus discarded by the merciless sea.

  Chapter One

  There were worse ways to wake up, Kate Redman thought dreamily, as she swam up out of sleep to find Tin’s warm hand upon her, gently stroking. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, turned over in bed, and kissed him. They were way past worrying about such things as morning breath now.

  “You don’t have to go in until later, do you?” murmured Tin, his lips to her shoulder and his hand moving lower.

  “No,” gasped Kate. “Not until ten.”

  “Fantastic…”

  “Mmm….”

  The ringing of Kate’s mobile at that moment was particularly unwelcome. She did her best to ignore it, and keep her mind on what Tin was actually doing, until the strident ringing became so loud and insistent that she cursed and reached over to answer it.

  “Oh, leave it,” said Tin’s muffled voice.

  “You know I can’t,” said Kate. She gave him an apologetic look as he swam up from under the covers.

  “Yeah, I know,” he answered in a resigned tone. Kate pressed the answer icon on her phone screen. The name of the caller showed ‘Anderton’, something that gave her an unwelcome jolt, especially after what she’d just been doing.

  “Sir?” she asked, trying to sound as composed as possible.

  “Kate, hi. Sorry it’s so early. Hope I didn’t wake you up.”

  “You didn’t, don’t worry about it.” Kate wondered what Anderton would say if she went on to tell him exactly what his phone call had interrupted. “What’s up?”

  As she said this, Tin’s own phone started buzzing and skittering across the bedside table. He cursed and went to answer it. Kate swung her legs out of bed and headed for the relative privacy of the bathroom.

  Anderton told her about the body that had been found. “Bit of a tricky one, this one.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It’s right on the edge of our jurisdiction. Might actually mean that we hand over to Salterton.” Salterton was the neighbouring police force, based in the large coastal town that bore the name. “I don’t know though yet, to be honest, and I’m taking us forward based on the premise that it’s our case. Can you get here soon?”

  “Of course.” Kate balanced the phone between her chin and her shoulder as she twisted the shower controls to start the water flowing. “Just give me ten minutes to get ready. Where exactly are you?”

  “I’ll text you the postcode. SOCO are already here, and Mark’s on his way.”

  “Fine,” said Kate, testing the water temperature with her hand. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  They said goodbye and Kate hopped into the shower. Over the noise of the rushing water, she could hear Tin’s voice as he took his phone call but not what he was saying. As she rinsed the last of the lather from her legs, she saw the half open bathroom door open fully.

  Tin handed her a towel. “I’ve got to go, Kate, sorry.”

  “That’s okay, I’ve got to go myself.” She didn’t elaborate further; Tin knew she couldn’t say much. Not that she knew much about what she was going to be investigating herself. A young black male, that was all Anderton had told her. A possible drowning, but possible foul play. Kate rubbed herself down briskly, thinking ahead.

  Tin kissed her goodbye. “I’ll see you later, yes? Maybe dinner somewhere?”

  “That would be great, but who knows what time I’m going to get back? I’ll call you, okay?”

  “Okay.” He gave her a final kiss. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten where we were when we were so rudely interrupted.”

  Kate grinned. “I hope not.”

  Tin winked and waved as he headed out the door. Smiling, Kate turned her attention to the bathroom mirror, trying to make herself look presentable, if not professional. As she powdered her face, she turned away a little from the mirror, so she could see herself in profile. The line of her left
cheekbone showed a tiny dip that would now always be there. Kate ran a fingertip over it, sighing. At least it didn’t hurt anymore. She thought of all the other injuries she’d sustained in the course of her career and thought, rather glumly, you’ll soon be able to literally read me like a map. Then she squared her shoulders and dismissed the thought, preparing to face the day.

  *

  It was a beautiful autumn day in early October. The sun shone brightly but the real warmth had gone and a whisper of the colder weather to come could be felt in the brisk breeze. Here and there, the trees were still green, but the leaves were faded and dull. The full autumnal range of colours was coming into play; a kaleidoscope of orange, gold, scarlet and ochre. Kate, remembering how windy it usually was at the seaside, stopped to pick up a scarf and a warmer jacket than she normally wore before flinging them on the back seat of her car.

  It was about a forty minute drive to the coast from Abbeyford, the town in which she lived and worked. Muddiford Beach was a popular tourist attraction, although the large crowds of holidaymakers had dispersed a little now that the summer holidays were over. As Kate drew into the clifftop car park, she could see the blue and white police tape stretched over the entrance to the footpath that led from the top of the cliffs down to the beach. A couple of uniformed officers stood guard. She wrapped the scarf around her neck and locked the car, carrying her jacket in her hand.

  Two hundred and forty steps led down to the beach, carved directly into the cliff. Kate negotiated each one with care, holding onto the railing on the beach side. Had the victim walked down these steps? Or had he come by boat? Had he even been thrown from the cliff top? Kate knew, as she walked over to where a white tent had been erected over the body, that if that were the case it would be obvious from the damage to the corpse. She ducked under the flap of the tent, bracing herself for the first sight.

  The first person she saw was Chief Inspector Anderton. Detective Inspector Olbeck stood next to him, and the most recent recruit to the team, Detective Constable Anne Whittacker, was hanging back a little. Kate smiled at her as she walked forward. She liked her new colleague, a forty-something mother of three who’d returned to the career she’d left behind ten years ago to have children. Kate rather admired that – it couldn’t have been easy, fitting back into full-time CID work, after a decade out of it.

  “Morning,” Anderton greeted her as Kate reached them. For a moment, they all stood looking down at the body. It wasn’t as bad as Kate had feared. If you looked at it with half-closed eyes, you could almost imagine the man was asleep. The illusion only lasted for a few seconds, though, once you took in the colour of the skin, the half-open eyes, the slackness of the mouth. He had been young, this man, no more than twenty-five, Kate thought. She crouched down to get a better view.

  The body was dressed in tattered denim jeans and a faded black T-shirt. No socks, no shoes, no jewellery that Kate could see. She moved her gaze slowly from the paler soles of the feet, up over the torso, to the finely curved shape of the skull, clearly visible under the short black hair.

  “Drowning?” she murmured, almost to herself.

  Anderton crouched down next to her with a groan. “God, my knees. Getting too old for this.” He gestured to the side of the head which was turned away from them into the sand. “It might be my eyes deceiving me but that doesn’t look quite right to me. I think he’s got head injuries.” Kate looked at where he pointed and saw what he meant – what might have been a slight depression in the curve of the bone, a faint patch on the sand that could have been blood. “We’ll know more once they’ve done the PM.”

  They both got up to their feet, Anderton slightly more stiffly than Kate.

  “Any ID on the body?” Kate asked.

  Olbeck shook his head. “We haven’t found anything. And you know what else makes me pause?” They all looked at him. “Why isn’t he wearing shoes?”

  “It’s a beach,” Anne volunteered doubtfully. “Perhaps he took them off, up there.” She pointed to the cliffs edging the beach.

  “Maybe,” said Olbeck, not sounding convinced. He stared hard at the worn clothes. “Maybe he was homeless.”

  “Maybe, maybe, maybe,” said Anderton. There was a slight commotion at the entrance to the tent as what seemed like a crowd of people entered all at once. “Here’s the rest of the cavalry.”

  Kate, Olbeck and Anne drew together a little, marking themselves out as a team, as five members of Salterton CID approached them. Kate didn’t recognise any of them, except the DCI, George Atwell, who she remembered from his visit to Abbeyford as a rather podgy, jovial man. He didn’t look very jovial now.

  The five of the Salterton CID faced the four officers from Abbeyford. Kate could see various members of the SOCO team look up at the change in atmosphere.

  “Anderton,” said Atwell, making it sound like less a greeting and more a threat.

  “Morning, George,” replied Anderton, in a casual way that didn’t fool Kate. She’d been in this situation once before, in her previous posting at Bournemouth. Two jurisdictions ostensibly collaborating on a case. What had actually happened was a whole lot of stepping on toes, offence taken and outright hostility. She hoped that wouldn’t be the case here, but she had to admit it hadn’t started off very promisingly.

  As Atwell and Anderton thrashed out the preliminaries, Kate observed the Salterton team. There were three men, of various ages, and a woman of around Kate’s own age, though she was very different in looks, being tall and blonde with an expression that Kate could only really describe as supercilious.

  “Well, now, until we check the official boundaries, we don’t know who needs to take this on,” Anderton was saying in a conciliatory tone. Kate wondered why he was so eager to take this case anyway. She gave herself a quick mental kick for thinking it but it was inescapable. There was no way that this case would be high profile. The murder (if it was murder) of a poor, young, black man wouldn’t rate anywhere near as highly as the killing of a young, white woman, for example. Kate caught herself thinking this and winced. That’s why, Kate, she told herself crossly. That’s why we need to take it on. If we don’t care about the poor and the vulnerable, then who the hell will?

  Brought back to reality, she realised that Atwell and Anderton were turning back to their own teams. She focused on what her DCI was saying.

  “As I said before, team, we don’t yet know who’s going to have ultimate responsibility for this case. While we work that out, it’s going to be more effective to work together.” Kate risked a glance at the Salterton team and wondered, from their frowning faces, whether they agreed with him. “DCI Atwell has kindly agreed to us debriefing with his own team, at the Salterton station, when we leave here.”

  There was no enthusiastic agreement to this – in fact, nobody said anything at all. Anderton continued. “We’ll need someone from both teams to stay to see if there’s anything from the preliminary medical exam.”

  “I will,” said Kate, just as the blonde woman from the other team said the same thing. They looked at one another. Kate caught what she thought was the merest flicker of a sneer from the other woman, who lifted her chin and looked down her nose. What was her problem?

  “You’d better introduce yourselves then,” said Atwell, a smile finally breaking out on his round face.

  “DS Kate Redman,” said Kate, stepping forward and holding out her hand.

  The blonde woman shook it limply, a mere squeeze of the fingers. “DS Chloe Wapping.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Kate said insincerely. Chloe said nothing but her mouth flickered in something that could have been a weak attempt at a smile. The two women stepped back to their respective teams.

  Olbeck, ever the peacemaker, was already introducing himself to the other officers. At his easy manner, something of the strain went out of the situation and the atmos
phere thawed slightly. Kate realised she had almost forgotten that they were all standing not ten feet from a dead body. She gave herself a quick mental shake, trying to focus her attention on what was important.

  The pathologist, Doctor Gatkiss, had already arrived and was kneeling on the sand by the body. Kate suddenly had a thought and hurried over to Anderton.

  “When does the tide turn? I mean, are we far enough up the beach for the sea not to reach the body?”

  Anderton looked worried. “That’s a good point, Kate.” He looked up at the Salterton officers. “Anyone know? Do we have a tide chart or something?”

  Having handed over that worry to her boss, Kate moved back to see what Doctor Gatkiss was doing. As she stood, silently watching, Chloe Wapping moved over to stand near her, just slightly too close for comfort. Try as she might, telling herself not to be paranoid, Kate couldn’t help but feel that Chloe had done it on purpose. She shuffled back a few steps, trying to do it discreetly, only for Chloe to step forward again, closing the gap once more. She had a very faint smile on her face. Kate felt a muscle in her jaw twitch and turned her face away, pretending the other woman wasn’t there.

  “Good morning, Doctor Gatkiss,” she said, thinking it wouldn’t hurt to let Chloe know that she was quite friendly with the pathologist.

  Ivor Gatkiss looked up and gave her his quick, shy smile. “Hello, DS Redman.”

  “How are you?”

  “Very well, thank you. And you?”

  Kate acknowledged that she was well. After a quick enquiry about another of the pathologists, Doctor Telling, now on maternity leave, Kate fell silent again, letting the doctor go on with his work.

  The tent emptied out as the other officers left. Kate moved away from Chloe again and this time, walked away to observe the body from the other side. From this angle, she could see his face, half-buried in sand. Even in death, it was a striking face; high cheekbones, a strong jawline, a high-bridged nose. Who was he? Kate looked again at the ragged clothes in which he was dressed. They were dry, she realised. Did that mean anything, though? The body had lain in the sun for several hours; the tide was out.