The new Detective Miller thriller from bestselling author Mark Billingham, full of tension, wit and incredible twists.
The Shadow Step: One taken simultaneously by a pair of dancers facing the same direction, one of them behind and slightly shifted leftwards (‘in the shadow’)
Typically, such a step perfectly demonstrates synchronized elegance. It showcases a couple in near telepathic harmony with one another. It does not normally end with someone stone-dead in a lake.
DS Declan Miller is a magnet for strange cases, but how can he catch a killer when the man confessing to the crime is clearly innocent? Things rapidly escalate when the murder that isn’t really a murder at all attracts the unwanted attention of a drugs Queenpin, a deranged ex-squaddie and a lovesick gangland enforcer. Then a student is kidnapped…
Throw in a wobbly dog, a pair of ceramic leopards and the distracting smell from a local biscuit factory, and – if he wants to save a young man’s life – Miller has little choice but to waltz all the way into the shadows.
Later on, when DS Declan Miller wasn’t busy practising the slow foxtrot he was finally getting to grips with, or caring for a rat that was shedding enough fur to stuff a small cushion, he would reflect on the disturbing way in which certain situations could go quickly from bad to worse, until they eventually spiralled out of control.
The tendency things had to . . . escalate.
Obviously, escalators were the foremost example of this, though Miller would be thinking about things that were rather more dangerous – this despite the fact that a dancer he and Alex had once competed against in Ormskirk had got a flip-flop caught in the mechanism of an escalator at the Houndshill shopping centre and was never able to cha-cha in quite the same way again.
No, Miller was thinking about the kind of escalation that involved people with guns and knives and resulted in multiple fatalities. A few angry words, perhaps a shove, and before you knew it there was blood sloshing around in a lake and bodies all over the shop.
The really bad kind.
One thing led to another – that was the way of the world, and it would be a pretty strange world if that wasn’t the case. Sunset was followed by sunrise, that flashy new gadget would be outdated before the guarantee expired, and a visit to the Pleased 2 Meat U kebab house opposite the north pier would almost certainly result in hospitalisation. Life was, at bottom, a series of interconnected events, most of which could not be prevented, even if some were rather more unpredictable than others.
A few months before the Simmons case had even begun, Miller’s partner DS Sara Xiu had skidded on a dog-turd while chasing a suspect along the seafront and turned her ankle very badly. This led to a few days spent hobbling around the incident room which, in turn, led to DI Tim Sullivan referring to her with tedious regularity as ‘Florence Shiteingale, the Lady With The Limp’. Xiu, who rarely saw the humour in anything – even if there wasn’t actually any there to see on this occasion – was extremely upset at Sullivan’s continual mockery, and it was the sight of her limping to the toilets in tears one day that prompted Miller to pop out at lunchtime to a nearby DIY store. To Sullivan’s subsequent discovery of the legend I AM A THUNDERING KNOB JOCKEY spray-painted across the bonnet of his beloved blue Mercedes E-Class.
One thing had led inexorably, and perfectly, to the other.
Later still, after justice of a sort had been served, and thankfully before Miller’s beloved pet rat Ginger had gone completely bald, he would be struck by a strange and satisfying coincidence.
A series of events had led to the new paint job on Tim Sullivan’s Merc, while an altogether separate sequence of very different events had caused the violent deaths of several people. Even if Miller had to concede that the latter was rather more serious, they did have one thing in common.
Both had been set in motion by an extremely anxious dog.
CHAPTER ONE
‘Ruby, no. Stop it! Ruby, please don’t do that . . .’
Barry Cheshire had always believed that however much the UK might consider itself a nation of animal lovers, and in spite of the popular saying, any man whose best friend was actually a dog must be a pretty bloody sad case. This was before his life had fallen apart in every respect that mattered and he’d become one himself. The saddest of sad cases.
‘Ruby . . .’ He hurried to catch up with the miniature brown sausage dog who, he was forced to admit, was now his best if not only friend, but not quickly enough to prevent her taking one last, luxurious roll in what to her clearly smelled of roses or freshly baked bread, but to the rest of the world was a smear of foul-smelling fox poop. ‘Why do you do that?’ He’d need to give her a bath when they got home, but that was OK.
It was something to do.
They quite often saw a fox, on their journey through the park every evening as dusk began to settle. A nice one, not manky like a lot of them, and with a decent brush. Thankfully, Ruby had given up chasing it after one occasion when the fox had stopped running, turned and stared defiantly at the small dog as if to say, ‘And now what are you going to do?’
Funnily enough, his ex-wife had given him much the same look when she’d outlined their new ‘living arrangements’ six months before. Barry wasn’t daft; it was clear that things between him and Stacey had come to a head. It was still something of a shock when she had politely informed him that from then on he would be living in the damp basement of the house he had paid for – and handing over a ‘reasonable’ rent every month for the privilege – while she and the bloke she was now seeing would occupy the rest of the place.
‘Are you serious? I’ve got to pay you rent to creep around down there while you and your fancy man swan about in my house? I have to sit like a lemon and listen to you two at it like rabbits, while I’m doing a sudoku or cooking beans on a plug-in hotplate? You must think I’m a complete mug. Well, you know what you can do with your so-called “living arrangements”, don’t you?’
That was what Barry had been thinking, and what, in hindsight, he wished he’d said. Pointing a finger or slamming his hand on the kitchen table, really letting her have what for. As it was, he’d simply looked at the floor and muttered, ‘Sounds fair enough.’
Having had her fox-poop fun and games curtailed, Ruby had charged off, and Barry was dragged from his less than pleasant reverie by the sound of her frenzied barking. He rounded the corner of the lake, moved through a tunnel of trees, and the reason for the dog’s alarm became obvious. A man was walking through the near darkness towards them and, somewhat more worryingly, so were the two extremely large dogs he had with him.
Barry had clocked the animals fifteen minutes earlier, as soon as he and Ruby had entered the park, and he’d deliberately chosen to walk around the lake well ahead of them. They must have changed direction and were now coming towards him from the other side of it. He hadn’t got close, and he was certainly no expert, but he was fairly sure the dogs were XL Bullys. Even if they weren’t, he didn’t much like the look of them, but, more to the point, Ruby had become extremely nervous around other dogs since recovering from a serious back injury a few months before. The cost of her surgery and the assorted therapies that followed had virtually cleaned Barry out, but it had been worth it to see her walk again, even if she was still a bit wobbly sometimes. Wobbly and nervous. If other dogs came close, she’d cower for the most part, hiding behind his legs, but every now and then she might suddenly decide she was somewhat bigger and braver than she was, which, in this instance, Barry did not think was a good idea. He called her back, removed the lead from around his neck and leaned down to clip it to Ruby’s collar. She was quivering.
‘It’s OK, Rubes, no need to panic.’
The man himself – actually no more than a teenager – was paying them no attention whatsoever, transfixed by whatever he was looking at on his phone, but the two big dogs had already spotted Ruby and were picking up their pace. Barry kept walking, keeping his head down and murmuring words of reassurance to his pet, but imagining that the eyes of the two far larger dogs just twenty or so yards ahead were narrowing. That they were already sizing up the tiny dachshund and thinking, Mmmm, tapas . . .
Just when Barry had decided that everything was going to be OK, the slightly larger of the two dogs suddenly charged towards Ruby. She immediately began to yelp, which only served to excite the Bully further, and before Barry had a chance to pull Ruby out of harm’s way it was on her.
There was a horrifying cacophony of growling and squealing and it took Barry a few seconds before he was able to drag the big dog away – dodging the teeth and the flying slobber – and haul the whimpering Ruby up into his arms. She was shaking as Barry checked for any obvious signs of injury and, seeing none, turned to leave, only to find the second of the dogs blocking his way, teeth bared. Unable to move and cradling the still-shivering dachshund, he was aware that the Bully’s owner had finally realised that something might be amiss and was ambling over.
‘You need to keep those bloody dogs on a lead,’ Barry said. The larger of the bloody dogs in question was now snarling and snapping at him, while behind him its companion had started to bark and run around in crazed circles. The owner leaned to grab it by the collar as he spat back a predictably crude response.
‘Those are XL Bullys, aren’t they?’ Barry waited, but the teenager only had reassuring words for his dogs, as though
consoling them for their failure to finish off their prey. ‘They should be on a lead – by law. Muzzled too, if I remember rightly. I’ve got half a mind to call the police.’
The lad released the dog he was holding and told it to ‘stay’, while Barry remained rooted to the spot, transfixed by the bigger animal, now pawing at the ground like it was ready to attack. Barry did not take his eyes off it, even once he’d become aware that its owner had moved unnaturally near to him and was leaning in, tight on his shoulder. Close enough for Barry to feel the teenager’s scrubby beard against his neck.
‘Do you want to “go”?’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
Barry turned round to face the lad and held his stare. He had bad skin and a scar across his forehead, and his breath smelled as though he and his dogs had been sharing tins of Chappie. ‘Do I want to what?’
The lad stepped smartly back, reached into his pocket and produced a knife as casually as if it was a railcard. ‘I’m going to stab you up,’ he said.
‘Seriously?’
‘Stab you up proper.’
Barry looked down at the knife for a second or two, then raised his eyes and leaned forward. ‘Go on then.’ He smiled. ‘Do me a favour.’
The teenager’s cockiness gave way momentarily to confusion, but it was just long enough for things to change dramatically. The dog that had been snapping at Barry jumped into him from behind and Barry held out a hand to steady himself. He stumbled against his aggressor’s chest, knocking him off balance, whereupon the lad with the knife fell backwards over the second dog who was now sitting patiently behind him and tumbled into the lake.
His ‘Fu . . .’ perfectly censored by the splash.
Barry could do little but watch as the little shitehawk’s hoodie disappeared along with the rest of him beneath the surface of the brown water. Then he turned and began walking quickly towards the exit, the two Bullys barking up a storm behind him. He clutched Ruby to his chest as he marched away in the gathering dark; grinning to himself and muttering to his best friend as he went.
‘Well, that was fun, Rubes, wasn’t it?’
The dog stretched up to lick his face.
Now, for the first time in a good while, Barry was laughing. ‘When he asked me if I wanted to go, I didn’t know he meant for a swim . . .