Murder Match (DS Leah West Book 1): A fast-paced crime thriller (DS Leah West Crime Thrillers 3) Read online

  Murder Match

  DS Leah West - Book Three

  Nic Roberts

  Ari Thorne

  Copyright © 2022 by

  Nic Roberts & Ari Thorne

  * * *

  ‘Murder Match’

  * * *

  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

  Epilogue

  Book Four

  Missed My Other Series?

  Love to read Detective Thrillers?

  About the Author

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  Murder Match

  A straight-A student found dead… a community fuelled by envy… and a case that will push her to confront the past.

  Having reconciled with her partner, Detective Sergeant Leah West is enjoying a period of peace. But that peace is shattered with the discovery of a teenage girl found dead in the park.

  For a girl who had everything going for her – the best grades, a good social of friends, and a scholarship – she had so much to live for.

  But no one gets to the top without making a few enemies along the way. The question is, who would want to knock her off her pedestal?

  Circumstances of the death are already grisly enough, but the case is a burst of déjà vu for Leah, and she finds herself remembering the unsolved mystery that led to her becoming a detective in the first place. But is it enough to catch the killer.

  Murder Match is Book 3 in this new series of nerve-wrecking crime thrillers that will daze you.

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  Prologue

  She didn’t know how long she had been running. It could have been a few minutes, or maybe even an hour. It didn’t matter to her. Time seemed to have blurred together.

  She looked around at the area surrounding her, lambasting herself for her own stupidity. She wanted to call out for help, for someone to come out and find her, but the nearest house was at least two miles away.

  The moon shone down on her and was the only thing illuminating her surroundings. Without it, she’d probably be stumbling around in the dark by now.

  There was a chance she could make it. She had to. The alternative was going back there, and she knew exactly what awaited her. She knew she wouldn’t be able to face it again.

  It occurred to her the last words she had spoken to her mum and dad had been a blasé, “See you soon.” Nothing more to it.

  If she had known that those words might have been her last, she would have thought of something else to say, to hold them, tell them how much she loved them, how sorry she was for always being a pain, and yet always making sure she was all right.

  If she got out of this, she would tell them all of this.

  She knew she had only made it this far because she was riding the waves of adrenaline. She was terrified that if she stopped to catch her breath, even for a moment, the energy would desert her, and they would catch up to her.

  She could feel that her lungs were on fire, and on several occasions, she thought she was going to cough them up.

  She was surrounded by a wide-open space. On the one hand, it meant that she could see her assailant coming a mile off.

  Unfortunately, it meant that she was deprived of a decent hiding place.

  Ahead of her, lights shone in the distance. Streetlights, but there was something comforting about them. As though she hadn’t been abandoned in the middle of nowhere. That all it would take was a few steps and she would be back where she belonged.

  Then, she heard the sound of footsteps. One after the other in hurried fashion.

  But maybe she could still make it.

  1

  Detective Sergeant Leah West thought she was being dragged into a black hole and was fighting to avoid a gravitational pull.

  “I will not go,” she declared with determination. “You can’t make me.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” Clarissa Everett muttered, rolling her eyes at the melodramatic response. “It’s a book club, not an exercise in sadism.”

  “Depends on the book,” Leah responded hurriedly, wanting to drop the subject.

  Meeting up for a glass of wine in her local had been enough, but Clarissa constantly dared her to be more adventurous… or as Leah put it, more sociable.

  This had consisted of trying to strong arm her into a local music group, getting her to join a walking meet, and lately, signing up for a book club.

  But she didn’t like to surround herself with a wide circle of friends. She liked to keep her group small and found that those relationships were the strongest.

  The truth was, she didn’t feel like joining anything right now. It was like she was waiting for the earth to open up and swallow her whole.

  When she thought about it, there wasn’t a particular reason for this feeling. Since coming to Bedford, she’d solved two high-profile cases, found a close circle of friends, and formed something meaningful with a good man.

  It should have been enough for her. More than anything, she wanted to get to the point where she could look at her life and say, ‘I am content with what I have.’

  But she couldn’t. There was something unsettled buried deep inside her, and she couldn’t explain what it was. But it rose to the surface whenever she thought things were just starting to calm down.

  “I think it’s down to you being a copper,” Clarissa had offered over a glass of wine one evening. It had become something of a routine, the two women meeting up at the end of a working day. The whole thing was still something of a paradox to Leah.

  If her younger self had told her that she would be sharing a bottle of wine with a journalist, she would have thought herself insane. But Clarissa had become one of Leah’s closest confidants and strangely, help for her department when they’d needed it and when DCI Betts had allowed her in.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Leah queried, secretly wanting the woman to spell it out for her.

  “I mean, you’re never happy unless you’re unhappy,” Clarissa said coyly, gesturing for the barmaid to bring another bottle. “I mean, let’s face it. You’ve got everything a person could want: a decent career, a decent p
ension, and a decent man who seems mesmerised by you.”

  Leah could see her point, but she was intrigued by the way her last statement hung in the air.

  “You don’t feel the need to find a man in your life?” she asked, unable to think of a single time she had ever seen Clarissa with a male companion.

  “No, absolutely not,” the journalist denied brazenly, giving the negative with swelling pride. “I don’t need anyone to tie me down. And don’t change the subject, we’re talking about you.”

  Leah and Sam’s relationship had been going well of late. Ever since he’d taken charge in the addict murderer case and saved her brother’s life, she’d realised how special he was and how she couldn’t not have him in her life.

  “You know what your problem is?” Clarissa asked, taking on the role of hotshot interrogator.

  “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me,” Leah groaned, knowing that her new friend was the type of person who never said what she wanted to hear, yet always told her what she needed to hear.

  “I think you are always looking for something to be wrong,” Clarissa observed, setting down the glass firmly, presumably to drive home the point she was making. “You had a major case to solve, and as soon as that was done, you gave your partner the boot.”

  Leah remembered with shame how she had pushed Detective Constable Sam ‘Jonesy’ Jones away for fear of endangering him. But he had proven he was more than capable of handling himself. And now she didn’t want to imagine a life without him. However rushed that sounded.

  Leah still wasn’t at the point that she could trust the happiness, but she felt she could trust him.

  “If I were you, I’d look at finding something in your life that wasn’t police related,” Clarissa offered, rubbing her eyes to keep the sleep from hitting her. “All work and no play will make Leah a very dull girl.”

  “I’ll log that away somewhere,” Leah insisted, knowing that the journalist probably wouldn’t rest until she was hitched.

  The two women hailed an Uber, taking Leah home to her cottage, where Clarissa helped her to her front door before sharing their goodbyes.

  The silence of her home engulfed her as she went inside and straight up to bed, not bothering to undress. She found herself reaching out to Jonesy’s empty pillow as though expecting him to return her touch.

  Things were good for her at the moment. More than good. She was probably in the best place mentally that she ever had been. Clarissa was right. She always seemed to be looking for the negatives in everything.

  But deep down, she knew something would come along to disrupt the peace. It was just a question of what and when.

  She wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.

  She went into work as normal, with Sam picking her up in his car—Leah’s car was still in a state of disarray after a recent car chase. Neither of them spoke much on the journey into work. Words seldom communicated the depth of their feelings for one another. But every now and then, he would take her hand in his as if to say, I’ve got you.

  When they got into the office, they committed themselves to a day of paperwork. But she knew the silence wouldn’t last forever and wondered how long it would be until the blissful peace was shattered and some unfortunate civilian had their lives ruined forever.

  The answer came just before midday. She watched as Detective Chief Inspector Kim Betts, took the call, her face clouding over, before she came out into the office space and began briefing the team.

  As she spoke, Leah felt as though she was experiencing déjà vu, as if she were stuck in a continuous time loop from which there was no escape.

  2

  A teenage girl had been found murdered. Her name was Jess Watson, and her body had been found discarded in a gravel pit at the Priory Country Park, clearly part of some haphazard attempt to dispose of her.

  She was seventeen years old, with beautiful auburn hair and green eyes. In the picture provided by her family, she had a broad smile and was clutching a recently won trophy. Her parents were Chris and Paula Watson, a dentist and a teacher for deaf children, respectively, and the family had moved to Bedford only five years prior.

  Jess had been a straight-A student with a passion for gymnastics. In fact, in the weeks leading up to her death, she’d been working to secure a sports scholarship. Leah admired kids who knew what they wanted to do and were willing to work hard to get it. She wished she had been a bit more like that at school.

  The teen had a wide circle of friends and had been popular at the local school. No one had a bad word to say about her. During the briefing, Jonesy had taken that to mean it would be difficult to find someone who wanted her dead, but Leah had worked enough cases to know that the brighter the picture, the darker the negative.

  They set out to the park where Jess’s body had been found.

  Leah hated this part of the case, happening upon the scene, seeing a victim so callously discarded. It once again occurred to her that her job required her to meet people either on the worst days of their lives or after their life had already ended. It always hit the hardest when they were teenagers, partially because it reminded her that a life that had been taken too soon, and partly because it always reminded her of Charlotte.

  Jess had last been seen by her parents at 7:13pm the previous night when she declared she was going out to meet with somebody. They had assumed it to be Benji, but when they had later asked him about it, he said that he’d been at home with his family and had made no plans to see her.

  And none of her friends had reported seeing her, or indeed, had any plans to see her. So that had left two possibilities—either one of them was lying and keeping secrets from the police or Jess had a social side that nobody else knew about.

  The detectives looked over the body that had been turned over. The poor teen had been strangled, whether by hands or by ligature compression it was hard to tell, but her lips were blue and her eyes were glassy.

  They looked for any belongings on her—a wallet or a phone—but nothing could be found.

  “Someone must have lifted them off her,” Jonesy suggested, looking forlorn at the sight of the dead girl. “Do you think this was a simple robbery? Maybe someone wanted money and jewelry, she said no, they panicked and killed her?”

  “An ordinary mugger going to this much effort to kill a teenage girl?” Leah asked, and hearing it like that, Sam had to admit it didn’t seem very likely.

  The first port of call was her parents. They ushered the two detectives into the living room and walked her through the main details.

  Jess had been about to start sixth form but was on the verge of attaining a gymnastics scholarship. She was a promising student with her whole life ahead of her. She had been quite a studious person, never having any time for friends or boyfriends. Her only passion in life seemed to be her exercise regime.

  “Somebody must have conned her,” her mum sobbed while dabbing her eyes. “A smart girl like my Jess wouldn’t be so easily taken in by someone offering to treat her like a princess. No, they would have found some other way to rope her in.”

  “Like what?” Jonesy asked, struggling to come away with anything tangible beyond the lesson that teenage girls were complicated.

  “I don’t know. Everyone in the class knew she was on a scholarship. They must have been jealous,” Mr. Watson answered wearily, clearly having already pressed the school-based conspiracy to the previous officers. “It wouldn’t surprise me if one of them decided to tear her down.”

  “Did Jess have any close relationships?” Leah asked, knowing that if Jess was indeed keeping secrets, she was hardly going to talk to her parents about it.

  “She has—had—a boyfriend,” Mr. Watson said, catching himself in the past-tense. “Benji Miller.”

  “You don’t think he might have had anything to do with this, do you?” Jonesy had seen enough true-crime documentaries to know that when a woman was either murdered or missing, it was almost always the husband or the partner
.

  But to the surprise of them both, Mr. Watson insisted, “Absolutely not. I met the boy on a few occasions. He was well-mannered, cared enough about Jess to respect her boundaries, and didn’t seem obsessed with shaping her to fit his image. He would never do anything to harm her.”

  But Leah knew that they would have to speak with him at some point, if only to cross him off the list.

  “Do you know if Charlotte kept any secrets from you both?” Leah asked, and it was only when she saw their perplexed expression that she realised what she said. “I’m so sorry, I meant, Jess—”

  Jonesy swooped in to rescue her and asked, “Do you mind if we have a look at the bedroom?”

  They all walked up the narrow staircase, which felt so claustrophobic that Leah wondered whether the walls were closing in. It was almost a relief when they managed to get into Jess’s bedroom.

  It was fairly obvious that Jess had a love for the colour purple. Everything from the carpet to the wallpaper to the bedsheets had some shade of purple on it.

  By the bedside mirror, there was a gathering of pinned photographs depicting Jess proudly holding up a trophy, and there was a series of ribbons decorating the wall. Leah wondered whether the room would ever be changed or if the parents would keep it as a shrine to their daughter. Charlotte’s parents had done something similar.