McIntosh Mirror Man

A heartstopping race against time crime thriller by the million-copy bestselling author (DCI Jack Hawsksworth 3)
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-83501-135-5
Verlag: No Exit Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 3, 416 Seiten

Reihe: DCI Jack Hawksworth

Autoren/Hrsg.

McIntosh, Fiona

Leseproben

PROLOGUE

Bristol, April 1992

Colin looked at the four girls in his life: all beauties, in his opinion, from his 48-year-old wife to the 16-month-olds in the twin pushchair. Each of them shared a golden-headed colouring but his daughter, mother to the twins, was the prettiest of all and had a reddish quality to her hair that in the right light looked like a bronzed rose. This was his only child and she had made him proud from the first squishy kiss she’d planted on her daddy’s lips. A spirited child and independent from an early age, she’d impressed him with her decisive manner, taking responsibility for all her decisions, good or indifferent.

Her choice of husband – a slightly rumpled and distracted university lecturer, a decade her senior – had not been who he’d imagined would catch her heart, but he’d proven himself to be not only faithful for the years of their marriage but loving, too. Colin could wish no more for her in her private life. Professionally, he had hoped she would take all that bright intelligence from her double degree and pour it into a career that might reach the highest echelons. But she’d chosen a quieter, less visible life of motherhood, redirecting her interest in medicine into a Master of Psychology. Now she counselled battered women from violent homes and marriages. She hadn’t let him down; in fact, she was making him prouder, being one of those silent achievers who didn’t go for glory, status or money, but served her community diligently… and made a difference to people’s lives.

Colin felt blessed by the quartet of females who orbited him. His every waking moment was about them: providing for them, looking after them, offering advice and being the main male in their lives. His daughter was back from the brink of despair at losing the professor to an aggressive cancer, which had taken him to his grave within six months of them learning of its existence. It would be a blow for anyone, but being left behind with twin one-year-olds was daunting, even for his capable child.

He’d suggested she come to live with them for a while, but the offer had fallen on deaf ears. She’d smiled and reassured him that learning to go it alone was the way forward, and would set her girls up to be strong and independent too. She promised to visit often and would consider moving back up to London to be closer to them.

On that wintry day those four sunny smiles appeared all the more vivid for the moody sky, bare trees and threat of rain. They asked him to come but he had some work to get done. All rugged up with beanies and scarves and quilted coats, they looked like a roly-poly gang and he felt touched by the way they all turned to wave from the gate. His emotions swelled and he realised these were moments to cherish, not to avoid due to work commitments. To hell with those, he thought, in an uncharacteristic moment of selfishness.

‘Hang on, everyone. I think I will come,’ he said, laughing at the exaggerated sigh of his wife.

‘I told you,’ he heard her say to their daughter.

‘Oh, Dad! Hurry up,’ she said, laughing. ‘We want to beat the rain.’

He listened with a smile as his wife distracted the babies, singing about Incy-Wincy Spider and the rains coming down… the same rhyme they’d sung to their daughter. That time really didn’t feel that long ago. He struggled to pull on his wellies, muttering for his family to be patient as they yelled from the gate. Finally he stepped out, equally rugged up, into the wintry early evening for a stroll to tire the girls out so they’d sleep well tonight.

His wife linked her arm with his. ‘I love this smell just before the rain.’

‘Petrichor,’ he remarked.

His daughter cut him a wry glance. ‘Hear that, girls?’ she teased. ‘Grandpa tells us this smell of impending rain is called petrichor.’

‘You can make fun, but I can’t help but have an enquiring mind,’ he replied in a lofty tone to make his wife giggle. ‘It’s the ground moistening, releasing various organic compounds and producing that lovely earth scent to tangle in our minds.’

His daughter inhaled. ‘Well, I just know it smells like happy childhood.’

‘Oh, that’s lovely, dear,’ her mother said with a smiling sigh. ‘I hope our granddaughters will have happy memories to lean on.’

‘We’ll make sure of it,’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘I’m glad they weren’t old enough to understand the hard bit of losing their father, but we’ll fill their lives with wonderful memories.’ He looked over at his daughter and felt suffused with affection on seeing her grinning nod of gratitude. She’d worked so hard to push her own grief down so her children wouldn’t feel her pain. ‘We’d better not go the long way. It will get dark soon,’ he continued absently. ‘And the temperature will drop rapidly.’

‘You held us up,’ his wife accused him, but not meanly.

The road narrowed as they began to skirt the lovely expanse of park they’d arrived at. He could see plenty of dog owners shared much the same idea and were hoping to give their pets a quick run before the impending rain.

‘Rather a lot of dogs around,’ he warned, noting two large animals gambolling about. Their owners were distracted, chatting. Meanwhile, another dog nearby was barking madly at them.

‘Dad, you’re always so cautious.’

‘You can’t be too careful. Don’t want to frighten our girls and have them terrified of dogs.’

‘All right, let’s keep to the pavement, then,’ his wife said. ‘We can track all the way around.’

He dropped back as the pavement narrowed, allowing his wife and daughter to walk ahead and pausing to study a magnificent rose garden that was now delivering its reward. He was aware of them looking back at him. ‘Don’t wait. I’ll catch up,’ he said, and they moved on and away from him.

He inhaled the scent of several blooms and, just as he was deciding life couldn’t be more blissful, he heard the screech of tyres.

It happened so fast, he couldn’t have reacted, couldn’t have done anything to change what occurred, or its outcome.

The four-wheel drive hit his wife at an angle first.

He straightened in horror to watch her loop into the air and hit a wall, coming to rest in a broken splay of limbs and oozing blood. Shocked at the scene that was like a clip from a B-grade movie and frozen where he stood, he looked back open-mouthed to where his daughter and grandchildren were supposed to be, but they were no longer there. Though it happened in a few heartbearts, he felt as though he were taking in events in horribly slowed-down motion. He could see the expensive French pushchair that had held the girls so safe lying crumpled and smashed fifty feet or so away. He could see the pompoms of their beanies poking out from the top where they were still strapped in, no longer safe but motionless, their baby faces rearranged by the scrape of tarmac. Further on, still driving a drunkenly woven path, was the beastly chunk of metal on wheels pulling his daughter beneath it like a rag doll, that rosy hair far redder than it should be, now matted with her blood.

As Colin took in the impossible scene, this same-sourced blood began to flow glacially slow and just as cold in his veins. He could see someone running to a telephone box, presumably to dial 999. They would find only corpses among Colin’s family – he didn’t need to touch any of them to know that they were dead. There was so much blood, and the four bodies remained inert. But he could see movement in the big car that had wrought this murder.

He began to run, heedless of cars and people but vaguely aware that the traffic had stopped to form a ghastly silence, into which poured the distant sound of sirens. He yanked open the door of the Land Rover and dragged the sobbing man out, pulling him with unimagined strength to flop like a landed fish on the tarmac.

He could smell the fumes of alcohol coming off the man and didn’t care what he was screaming – his apologies, or why he was so intoxicated that he had mounted the pavement and killed four magnificent females. He ignored the rough road scraping against the man’s limbs as he recklessly hauled the driver around the vehicle to where his daughter lay trickling blood.

Before Colin could force the blubbering man to stare at his broken child and his family’s stolen future, he could feel arms pulling him back, and his shocked gaze caught sight of the bottle green of a paramedic’s uniform.

‘Let me past, sir, please,’ one said – a man.

Another, a woman, gently pushed on his chest. ‘Let us do our job, sir.’

‘That’s my...