Deadly Highs (DS Leah West Book 2): A fast-paced crime thriller (DS Leah West Crime Thrillers) Read online

  Deadly Highs

  DS Leah West - Book Two

  Nic Roberts

  Ari Thorne

  Copyright © 2022 by

  Nic Roberts & Ari Thorne

  * * *

  ‘Deadly Highs’

  * * *

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Some may be used for parody purposes.

  Any resemblance to events, locales, business establishments, or actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Love to read Detective Thrillers?

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Book Three

  Missed My Other Series?

  Love to read Detective Thrillers?

  About the Author

  Love to read Detective Thrillers?

  Join my Newsletter to be the first to hear about New Releases and ARC opportunities.

  http://eepurl.com/hskzML

  Deadly Highs

  Detective Sergeant Leah West is back at the scene of a gruesome murder.

  * * *

  Along with her partner DC Sam Jones, they have to uncover the mystery surrounding the death before anymore bodies turn up.

  * * *

  Deadly Highs is Book Two in this fast-paced crime thriller series following DS Leah West (a personal friend of DI Olivia Austin)

  * * *

  Prologue

  He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he’d heard his name.

  He’d had to change it, of course. Strip away everything to do with his real identity and rebuild himself from the ground up. It had been necessary for his survival.

  If anyone cottoned on to who he really was, he wouldn’t be granted the luxury of a quick death.

  No. No, these people would draw it out. They would want to make an example of him. It wouldn’t be enough to just make a martyr out of him. The name of the game would be to break him for all the world to see.

  He studied the looks of all the men and women in the room alongside him. He was supposed to love them like family. These people truly bought into the idea of honour among thieves. But their brutality dials had been turned up to the highest possible click, and he had seen them at work, dispatching a man who had tried to overcharge them.

  No one else had wanted the job. They had all known that it was a death sentence. Nobody was expected to return from the job in one piece. Many of them had used the excuse that they had families to provide for.

  But he didn’t have a family. He didn’t really have friends, come to think of it. Of course, in the event of his death, there would be nothing to suggest he had even existed. There would be no one to mourn him. He had made peace with that a long time ago… at least he thought he had.

  But now that he was staring death in the face, dealing with the possibility of his own end, the idea of having a family got to him, the possibility of a life not lived.

  He wanted to delude himself into believing there was still time. That he could still enjoy all those moments. Maybe find a woman who could make an honest man out of him.

  But this was the endgame. The odds of him coming out of it alive were 27%.

  And that was assuming the hail of bullets managed to miss all his major arteries.

  It was all happening so quickly. He could see all the flashes of emotion going through their faces. Shock, horror, anger… betrayal.

  The silent pact between them all was instantly shattered as the warehouse was flooded. By that point, it was everyone for himself. And they were no longer comrades, no longer family… just silent enemies that had yet to reveal themselves.

  He didn’t know how much time he had before suspicion would fall on him. But he could already see them making the calculations in their heads, trying to work out inconsistences, their minds running at breakneck speed.

  And then, as an officer burst into the room, he locked eyes with him…

  …and that was what sealed his fate.

  1

  Two years later…

  Life was going well for Leah West.

  She had arrived in Bedford a complete stranger, wondering if she was ever going to adapt to town life after living in London for so many years.

  But her recent solving of the Self Killer copycat case had made hers a popular name in the town. She was treated with a great deal of respect by her peers.

  “I’d be careful if I were you,” her partner, Detective Constable Sam ‘Jonesy’ Jones, had once said to her. “People have a thing about coppers who rise above everybody else. They make the rest of us look bad.”

  She could tell there was mild bitterness in his voice. She had returned to duty a few days ago, having taken an extended break after her last case. During that time, she and Sam had spent a lot of time together, getting to know each other, finding out each other’s quirks. She had found out that he was a dab hand with the badminton racket, and he had discovered that Leah could not hold a tune to save her life. Jonesy had said, “I think the expression ‘tone-deaf’ was invented specifically for you.”

  Leah wondered how personal she could allow their relationship to be. She knew that relationships between serving detectives were difficult to navigate. Back in London, she recalled an affair between two colleagues during her days in uniform, an affair that had ended with the husband coming into work with a black eye and the two unable to share the same breathing space without driving each other up the wall.

  But Sam was fun, the safe option, she had found. He didn’t question her or condemn any of her decisions. He had taken her as she was.

  And Leah had wanted to be okay with that mindset, but there was a part of her that felt she couldn’t trust the happiness and wondered whether they were moving too fast.

  So, the night before she was due back at work, she told Sam that they had needed to take it easy. She certainly didn’t want anyone thinking of them as lovers.

  Jonesy’s first response had been to ask whether it had been anything that he’d done.

  She’d simply told him that they needed to focus on being consummate professionals. Which, while a feeble excuse—considering she had initiated the romance in the first place—was much better than telling him the truth.

  She had wound up in hospital after being stabbed by Chloe Burton. It had been a near miss. If Chloe had managed to slice her a few more inches to the right, Leah probably wouldn’t be around to tell the tale.

  But that whole incident had
only happened because Chloe had patterned her killings on the famed Self Killer. It had been Leah’s past that had brought her to this crisis point. She knew it could have so easily been Jonesy lying there on the ground, bleeding out. All because of her and her past.

  She couldn’t risk bringing that kind of chaos into his life. So, she had tried to keep her distance. And she could tell that Sam resented her for it.

  In the end, she had needed someone to talk to about it. And it had been the last person she thought she would ever confide in.

  “I figured he had a thing for you.”

  Clarissa Everett was sitting at the bar in the Bedford Lion Pub drinking a glass of white wine, sat on a stool opposite Leah who was nursing a soft drink.

  Leah had a lifelong hatred of journalists, and her experience with the recent Angela Fields murder had done little to alleviate that perception.

  But as the new editor of the Bedford Gazette, Clarissa had gone to great pains to undo the damage left behind by Angela, such as focusing on more human-interest stories, moving away from the tabloid approach, and building a working relationship with the police.

  As a result, Leah and Clarissa had met several times for a drink and a catch-up, a routine that Leah was starting to enjoy.

  “What makes you think he has a thing for me?” Leah responded regarding Clarissa’s comment.

  “Oh, come on,” Clarissa snorted, taking a healthy swig of wine. “I was born in the morning, but it wasn’t this morning. I remember when you were both in my office, dealing with the fallout of that anonymous source. The way he defended you… It went well beyond the professional loyalty.” She paused before playfully adding, “And I’m a journalist. I’m an expert of human psychology.”

  Leah raised an eyebrow. “Is this just chitchat between the two of us, or do I have to prepare a gagging order?” There was no threat in the tone. Leah and Clarissa knew each other well enough to recognise the playful banter.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to spread you both all over the paper,” Clarissa replied, signalling to the barmaid for a refill. “Though I do have to wonder why you would break it off. You must have seen something in him worth liking.”

  Leah wasn’t sure how honest she could be with Clarissa. “I don’t think I can afford that kind of thing in my life right now.”

  Clarissa shook her head disapprovingly. “That’s not how it should work. You need to leave all that heavy shit at the door, unwind. You can’t be on duty 24/7… though I’m sure some people would prefer it that way. Same for Jonesy. Nice young lad like that. He shouldn’t be fixated on death. Take it from someone who might as well be married to the job.”

  Leah took in what she was hearing, knowing that she had neglected her personal life in favour of her professional life.

  “So, have you got any other juicy gossip?” Clarissa asked eagerly.

  “Not really,” Leah admitted.

  “What about that ex-copper—Kemp, I think his name was,” Clarissa said, at which point Leah’s ears pricked up. “I’ve seen him hanging around every now and then.” She shrugged before continuing. “Well, limping would probably be the better choice of words. Wonder what’s keeping him here.”

  That was a question Leah had wanted to know the answer to. There was nothing tying Kemp to Bedford. And it was surprising he would stay, given that he’d been responsible for supplying Angela with so much blackmail material.

  She had been hoping for the opportunity to confront him, to find out his intentions. He hadn’t committed any crimes, as far as she knew. He had tried to keep a low profile. So, what had drawn him to Bedford?

  Clarissa’s phone buzzed an alert. “I think we need to call it a night, Leah,” she said, removing herself from the chair. “Once again, always a pleasure.” Clarissa wrapped her arms around Leah, who appreciated the embrace. The two weren’t too far off in age.

  And as Clarissa left the pub, Leah couldn’t help but feel like she was the type of person Charlotte would have grown up to be like.

  Had she actually lived to Clarissa’s age, that is.

  2

  Leah thought back to the time she had done drugs.

  She had been a teenager at the time. As a kid, she and Nate had had it drilled into their heads that drugs were evil, as though she or her brother would grow up to become dealers.

  But as Leah blossomed into maturity as a teenager and mixed with her peers, she found that it wasn’t so black and white. Sometimes, it was just a couple of kids wanting to have a stress-free time. She and Charlotte had occasionally smoked weed with some friends before chewing an entire pack of gum to disguise the smell when they returned home.

  Of course, when she had set her mind on joining the police, she’d had to do away with that because the police needed to be able to stand up to public scrutiny.

  And during her career as a police officer, as she got to grips with the criminal element, she became more familiar with the drug scene and the scum who dealt death to kids. She had often felt that whenever she arrested somebody, they were always at the end of a chain so far from the source they could never be traced back, allowing for complete deniability… while Leah had been left feeling like she barely scratched the surface.

  She shook her head, bringing her thoughts back to the present and walked into the apartment building, accompanied by two other officers. There was a faint stench in the air that burned her nostrils, a smell that she recognised as vomit. It was a grimy-looking corridor, the kind of place where only insects would reside.

  But the residents inside were already viewed as vermin, so it wasn’t an entirely inaccurate description.

  Sam was already on the scene.

  “DS West,” he said courteously, clearly having no intention of speaking on a first-name basis. “Neighbour came down to report on the smell. When the occupant wouldn’t answer, they looked through the letterbox. Not the nicest sight to greet them.”

  Leah peered into the apartment building. Her eyes fixated on the kitchen where there was a mountain of dirty dishes piled up in the sink. There was no carpet on the floor, only a seemingly endless stream of fag-butts. As she made her way through the hallway, she tried to prevent her eyes from going to the body. “What do we know about the victim?” Leah asked, wanting to know everything about the apartment’s occupant so that she could attach meaning to the corpse lying at her feet.

  “David Tomkins,” Jonesy said. “Repeat offender for various breaking and entering charges. Possession of drugs and intent to supply. Been in and out of young offender’s institutions since he was eleven.”

  “Did he have next of kin?” Leah asked, wanting to believe that even someone who had fallen so far still had someone who cared for them in life.

  “If he did, they’ve probably washed their hands of him by now,” Jonesy replied, touched by Leah’s compassion which broke through his cynical façade, reminding himself why he had fallen for her in the first place.

  “Find out what you can,” Leah said as she knelt down to look at the corpse.

  The victim was a young man in his early twenties, messy hair that had not been cut for some time, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts in a questionable state of cleanliness. There was dried vomit around his mouth, his glassy eyes looking up at the ceiling.

  “Any early estimations for the cause of death?” Leah asked, wanting to crack on without having to wait for the post-mortem.

  “If I were to hazard a guess,” offered Forensic Investigator Priya Kapoor, kneeling down to look at the body. “I would say asphyxiation. Must have choked on his own vomit. Brought on by an overdose.”

  “Do you have any idea what he might have overdosed on?” Leah asked, looking down at the victim’s arms and noticing a series of blue veins against pale skin.

  “No, can’t say I do,” Priya noted. Though from the way she said it, Leah figured Priya felt she was probably better off not knowing. “That’s a riddle for the pathologist to solve.”

  “So…” Jonesy began
, approaching the body and Leah. “Are we going to chart this down to misadventure, or would you rather look at other possible solutions?”

  “Search this place,” Leah instructed, looking around at the flat that appeared as though it was going to come crumbling down. There was something smeared on the walls, and Leah was suddenly grateful that her deduction skills were not so acute that she could deduce what it was.

  “Anything we should be looking for?” Jonesy asked, making sure his gloves were secure, not looking forward to the idea of making contact with any of the surfaces in the apartment.

  “Illegal substances,” Leah said, wondering if any of them had found their way into the victim’s system.

  There was a thorough search of the apartment, with every door, every drawer, everything checked. There were plenty of instruments: syringes, rubber wires, and a shattered bong, leaving traces of glistening glass on the bare floor.

  But no substances were found, to Leah’s evident disappointment.

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” she said, looking around for any details she might have missed. “You’ve got plenty of the utensils for ingesting drugs… and yet no drugs in the actual flat?”