Not A Friend Of The Family (A Friend Of The Family Book 2)

Book summary

"In 'Not A Friend Of The Family,' a chilling mystery unfolds in a small Yorkshire town as Detective Inspector Richard Platt and his team chase a cunning killer. As they delve deeper, unsettling truths emerge. Simultaneously, Melanie Foster, unjustly confined in Larksford House Clinic, seeks answers about her past. A web of deception unravels, unearthing long-buried secrets with deadly repercussions."

Excerpt from Not A Friend Of The Family

Tuesday, 25th April.

“Tainted Love” played on the radio as they drove back to the police station in Farnbrook. While DC Summers drove, DI Platt slept in the back seat, and DS Elford looked out the window next to her. None of them had any idea what had just happened. All their neat theories of Morris being a whack job psycho killer had been blown out of the water.

The man had been as clean as they came. The search of his room had revealed nothing. His cell had been bigger, but it was free, and he had a job; what did he care? It was clean and tidy; Morris had decorated where he could. The room was near the recreation centre. It had been an old office until the prison got a facelift, and then it became a storage room and, after that, a home for Morris.

There were pictures of Morris’s wife and daughter in cheap frames.

This puzzled Platt. Where had he gotten the photographs from? Then they found the letters from his daughter, even some from his wife. Talk about messed up, Platt had thought. In one of the letters, the wife apologized for getting him locked up and explained his drinking had gotten out of control, and the only way to help him was to get him locked up.

What a bitch, Elford had sworn when he read the letter.

‘Sometimes, we do the wrong thing for the right reason,’ Platt had said, but he was also thinking the same as his DS.

‘Sounds like motive to me, guv,’ Summers had said until she realized that was the fifth letter from over a hundred.

‘Wow, thought my family was messed up,’ Elford had joked.

* * *

The next tune on the radio was some remake from an old sixty’s song. Pity they’d trashed it, Summers thought; she loved the original version. Summers changed the station using the controls on the steering wheel to Radio 2. Elford said nothing. He just kept staring out the side window, his thoughts a million miles away. The case was messing with his head. It was meant to be simple.

A nut job kills people; they catch the killer and are back in time for tea and toast. Well, in the perfect world of television or the movies. But this wasn’t a perfect world; it had been almost a year, and they were only now breaking ground. Nothing, in this case, fitted any pattern. The killer liked travelling; he picked his targets and studied them. He is proficient in forensics. He leaves plants that are also a message; worst of all, he has no qualms about going after police families.

Summers drove on, Platt slept, and Elford continued staring at the world as it whizzed by. A rain shower seemed to come out of nowhere, a passing cloud with too much cargo. The wipers came on automatically and freed a clear view. Less for the song on the radio, the car was silent, giving them time to think and reflect. Summers thought back to Platt’s family’s photo that he had shown her, which had the same fountain in the background of the painting and the photograph. Why was this damned fountain in both pictures? She used the voice command of the car’s handsfree system and asked it to call Mike Leeds, a friend who worked at her station.

‘Hey, Mike, it’s Kate. Yeah, Hi. Look, Mike, can you do me a favour? Find out what you can about Larksford House… what… yes, that place. Yes… anything you can, especially going back to before it was taken over by a man named Hicks,’ she asked. Her voice was husky, and friendly with a touch of flirtation. As Summers ended the call, she returned her concentration to the road.

Elford was still looking out of the window, and Platt still lay in the same position in the backseat. Only this time, he had one eye open.

Platt had taken in her request to her friend at the station. Slowly he closed the eye, just in time as Summers checked on Platt using the rear-view mirror. As she looked back at the road, he opened his eyes again; this time, they had a maddening look. Platt was less than happy. She was looking into places she really shouldn’t.