Spotlight Read online

  Spotlight

  Robert Innes

  Published by Robert Innes in 2017

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Robert Innes.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For questions and comments about this book, please contact [email protected]

  Cover designed by Ashley Mcloughlin.

  Contents

  About This Book

  Also by Robert Innes

  Spotlight

  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

  One Week Later

  Thank You!

  Also by Robert Innes

  About This Book

  Released: October 24th 2017

  Words: 34,000

  Series: Book 5 - Blake Harte Mystery Series

  Standalone: Yes

  Cliff-hanger: No

  Life is stressful for Detective Sergeant Blake Harte. Not only must he come to terms with his difficult new Inspector at the station, but then his parents suddenly turn up on his doorstep – and his mother does not approve of his new boyfriend, and his relationship with Harrison soon begins to suffer.

  Meanwhile, Harmschapel police station is in pursuit of two drug dealers. These two men have proven difficult to apprehend before, but then the case takes a sudden and inexplicable turn. One night, during a high speed car chase, the two suspects completely vanish into thin air, before Blake’s eyes.

  While trying to fathom how it is possible for a car to seemingly evaporate in the middle of a tunnel, one of the suspects turns up dead, in equally bizarre circumstances. Blake is soon faced with more questions than answers, and the killer may be about to strike a lot closer to home…

  Also by Robert Innes

  The Blake Harte Mystery Series

  Untouchable

  Confessional

  Ripples

  Reach

  Spotlight

  Spotlight

  Harrison opened his eyes, but he may as well have kept them closed. All he could see was darkness. He felt groggy and confused, his head was throbbing, and he had a sharp pain in his back, as if there was something sticking into him.

  He raised his head slowly and tried to look around him. Then, he realised that he was in an extremely confined space, and that his hands and feet were tied with, what felt like, thick rope. In the next second, he felt the unmistakable rise and fall of a car going over a bump of some kind in the road. Harrison’s heart thumped loudly in his chest; he was in a car boot.

  He began to feel extremely claustrophobic, his heart felt like it was going to burst out his chest. Panic overcame him. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead. He closed his eyes and thought back to a conversation he and Blake had had very early on in their relationship. Blake had taught him how to ease panic attacks and level himself so that whatever he was faced with, he could deal with more calmly and with more focus. Slowing his breathing, he kept his eyes shut and, despite his current situation, began to let the motion of the car journey rock him into a calmer state of mind. Once he began to feel his heartbeat lessen, he opened his eyes again and tried to look around him for any clue that could help him. He could feel that his mobile phone was no longer in his pocket, and he was finding it impossible to gauge what direction the car might be travelling in, and judging by the sound of the engine, they were picking up speed.

  Harrison tried to recollect how he had ended up in this position. He had a vague memory of sitting down at the table with Blake, about to eat dinner. Then, he could just about picture a broom, a vacuum cleaner, and a mop bucket. After that, he was drawing a blank. The memories were there, but it was as if they were tantalisingly out of reach; shapes with no form as words with no meaning flew aimlessly around his mind.

  Then, he heard the sound of the car speeding over gravel, and the bumping suddenly got worse. But then, as suddenly as the jolting had started, the car came to a sudden halt. The silence was amazing. Harrison did not know how long he lay there, unable to hear anything except his own shallow breathing before suddenly, the door of the boot flung open and he was blinded by the sunlight. Automatically, he went to shield his eyes, before remembering that his hands were out of action, leaving him just to squint up at the silhouette of his captor. Then, Harrison saw what they were holding. The outline in the sun was unmistakable. It was a gun.

  “Oh good,” said the figure. “You’re awake. Move.”

  1

  Two days earlier

  The roads on the outskirts of the village of Harmschapel were picturesque and quiet. In the midday sun, butterflies danced with each other in the air, and all that could be heard in the tranquil environment was the gentle sound of birds singing. But in the distance, the roar of a car engine could be heard, getting closer and closer. Suddenly, the peace was shattered as a crimson red car zoomed around a bend, with a police car not far behind.

  In the passenger seat of the police car, Detective Sergeant Blake Harte talked frantically into his radio. “We’re on the roads outside of the village. Suspects are heading towards Clackton.” There was a crackle of acknowledgment on the radio. “Come on, Michael! We’re going to lose them!”

  Sergeant Michael Gardiner glanced at him. “I am going as fast as I can. Unless you’d rather we ended up going flying into a field? I’m sure Angel would love that. Losing the suspects and writing off a car in the process. They know these roads. You can tell.”

  “You know these roads, don’t you?” Blake exclaimed incredulously. “How do you normally get out of Harmschapel? Teleport?”

  “It’s not safe to do these bends at this speed,” snapped Gardiner, frantically spinning the steering wheel to get them round a particularly sharp corner. “And they know it.”

  They were in pursuit of a car driven by two men that Harmschapel police had been trying to pin down for several months, on suspicion of drug dealing. Finally, that morning, they had caught them in the act of a transaction down a dark secluded street of Harmschapel, and Blake and Gardiner had given chase, leading them here.

  The siren of the car wailed as they continued the pursuit. Blake inwardly cursed the location – if this had been happening in his old placement back in Sale near Manchester, they would have been able to cut them off via another road, but the winding country roads here were too narrow to even attempt to overtake them. All they could do until they reached a wider section was try and keep on their tail.

  “Where the hell are they even going?” Blake asked. “There’s nowhere for them to hide out here.”

  “You know these types,” Gardiner grunted. “Desperate thugs will try anything to save their skin. And they know we’ve got enough evidence to get them both put away for a long time.”

  The road ahead went underneath a railway line, and instead of a bridge like in most residential areas, the road led them under the line via a small cramped tunnel, which curved in the middle. Blake remembered it from his first day arriving in Harmschapel, as he had to go through it fairly slowly because meeting any other traffic in the middle m
eant that one of the vehicles would have to reverse to let the other one through. It was certainly not safe to go through it at high speed, but nevertheless, that’s exactly what they were doing. Blake felt his body tighten as they zoomed into the tunnel. The speed they were going, if there was any traffic coming the other way, there would certainly be a substantial accident. Fortunately, the road was clear and they were soon out in the bright sunshine again. But the car in front was now getting further ahead of them.

  “We’re losing them, Michael,” Blake said sharply.

  “Yes, I can see that!” snapped Gardiner, glaring at him. “Contrary to what you might believe, DS Harte, I am quite capable of –“

  “Michael, look out!” shouted Blake.

  Ahead of them, a large tractor was pulled out of the left hand side of a crossroad. Gardiner slammed on the brakes, and the car skidded across the road. It came to a stop, jolting them both forwards in their seats, inches from the end of the tractor’s trailer. As it trundled across the lane in front of them, all they could do was watch the car they had been chasing disappear into the distance.

  Blake slammed the dashboard with his fist. “Dammit!”

  Gardiner sighed. “They must have seen the tractor and cut across it.”

  “I hate the countryside!” Blake fumed. “What am I supposed to tell Angel now?”

  Gardiner shrugged. “That you lost them.”

  Blake’s head spun round. “What do you mean l lost them? You were the one driving!”

  Gardiner watched as the tractor finally cleared the road in front of them. By now, the other car would be miles ahead of them. “You’re the commanding officer. I follow your orders. Technically, you were the one driving. I just steer.”

  Blake could only glare at him.

  “Just let me do all the talking,” Blake said to Gardiner as they walked into Harmschapel police station.

  “That was my intention,” Gardiner replied cheerfully, strolling past him.

  Blake gritted his teeth but said nothing.

  They walked into the meeting room, which was buzzing with activity. PCs Billy Mattison and Mini Patil were at their desks, tapping furiously on their computers, Sergeant Mandy Darnwood was talking on the telephone, and their new boss, Detective Inspector Jacob Angel, was sitting in his office, his tall skeletal frame giving him an unjust appearance of fragility and delicateness. He looked up, his cold blue eyes narrowing through his steel rimmed glasses as Blake and Gardiner approached his office door and knocked.

  “Come in,” he said sharply.

  Blake took a deep breath and entered the office, Gardiner casually following behind.

  “Ah, DS Harte,” Angel said, placing his expensive looking pen down gently on the desk. “I take it this is to do with the arrests of the Pennines?”

  Blake scratched the back of his head. He could just see the smug expressions on Keith Pennine and his son, James’ faces when they had realised that they had escaped them. “Erm, no, Sir. I’m afraid not.”

  Angel raised a condescending eyebrow. “I see. Would you care to tell me what happened?”

  “They escaped, Sir,” Blake replied. “We were in pursuit of them all the way up to the crossroads past Clifton Moore Tunnel, then a tractor got in the way, and they got away from us.”

  “And how, may I ask, was a tractor of all things allowed to get in your way?”

  “It came out in front of us just as we were approaching the crossroads, Sir,” Blake replied, glancing at Gardiner. “It was pulling a large trailer and because of the speed it was going, by the time it passed, they had long gone. Michael couldn’t get ‘round it in time.”

  “Michael couldn’t? Why do you say that?”

  Blake frowned. “I just meant because he was driving.”

  Angel clasped his hands together in front of him. “I see. That’ll be all, Sergeant Gardiner.”

  Gardiner nodded and left the office with a slight look of smugness about him. Angel waited until the door to the office had been closed again and looked up at Blake. “DS Harte, how long have we been after the Pennines?”

  “About four months.”

  “Indeed. Including two months where I was not here,” Angel said calmly.

  Blake’s eyes narrowed as he tried to work out where this was going.

  “And in that four months, as I understand it, they have always been one step ahead of us. Or, should I say, one step ahead of you.”

  “Me?”

  “You have been the person in charge of the investigation, have you not?”

  Blake sighed. “Yes, Sir.”

  “And yet we still don’t seem to have them. As I understand it, we don’t even have a grasp on where they go when they’re not on the street corners selling their drugs. They can’t be far away, but they always seem to slip through our, or indeed, your, fingers.”

  It was taking Blake a considerable amount of effort not to tell Angel exactly what he could do with his condescending manner.

  “Let me show you something,” Angel said. He opened his large notebook and retrieved a pencil from a holder full of stationary in front of him. He wrote something in large letters before holding up the pad for Blake to read. “What does this say?”

  Blake stared at the pad in disbelief. “It says ‘DS Harte,’ Sir.”

  Angel nodded, then pulled out an erasure from the stationary pot and rubbed out something on the pad. He then held it up again. It now just read ‘Harte.’

  “Two letters that were incredibly easy to get rid of,” he said, just as calmly as ever. “I hope I’ve made my point. Now, if you could come in early tomorrow, I’d be very grateful. I have something I wish to discuss with everybody. I’ll see you at eight tomorrow, DS Harte. I just hope that is how I shall continue to regard you in the coming weeks.”

  Blake gave Angel an incredibly strained smile, and walked out of the office without another word.

  2

  Life for Harrison Baxter had become almost utopian compared to a year ago. While his old life, living on his parents’ farm, had been plagued with anxieties, and the general feeling that he was jumping at the sight of his own shadow, Blake’s invitation to move in with him had made Harrison feel like a new person. Their relationship had gone from strength to strength, and it was finally starting to feel like he was putting the darkness of his life behind him at last.

  Walking into the kitchen of Juniper Cottage, he glanced at the clock. All being well, Blake would be home in about ten minutes. Harrison flicked the kettle on and glanced up at the calendar that was hanging from the cupboard. Blake had flipped the page onto a new month that morning. As he glanced at it, Harrison frowned as on the next day, Blake had written a name that Harrison did not recognise. ‘Bethany.’ A scratching from the back door distracted him and he turned to see Betty the goat glaring at him through the window of the back door. Harrison sighed and walked towards the door, shaking his head. He had had Betty since he was a child, and he had made it clear to Blake when they had started their relationship that the goat was very much a part of his life. There had been times when she had been his only friend over the years and Harrison was not about to abandon her. Blake had accepted this but had been insistent that due to the amount of important paperwork he brought home from the police station, she could not be allowed to roam free in the house. The only one who had not been willing to agree with these conditions was Betty, who had previously been allowed free reign of Harrison’s house and the property had had the damage to prove it. Her behaviour had been nothing short of obstinate the past couple of months, though she was slowly getting accustomed to her new surroundings.

  Harrison opened the back door to entertain her for a few minutes when there was a sharp knock at the front door too. Harrison frowned. He was not expecting anybody, and it was very unlike Blake to have forgotten his keys. He opened the door and was surprised to see a woman and a man, both looking like they were in their sixties standing in front of him.

  The woman raised her ey
ebrows as Harrison stared at her. She was wearing a frilly blouse, with perfectly coifed white hair, with a pair of glasses hanging down from her neck on a chain, and the man with her was rotund, greying at the sides, clutching two suitcases beneath his arms.

  “Hello,” Harrison said when it became clear the woman was not planning on speaking until he had. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m not sure,” the woman replied, looking Harrison up and down. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Harrison,” he replied. “I live here.”

  “Do you now?” she said, her eyes narrowing. “I see.”

  “Stephanie, love, will you get in?” the man hissed hastily. “These cases are giving my shoulder hell.” He looked up at Harrison. “Look, can we come in, son?”

  “We’re looking for Blake,” Stephanie said, ignoring the man who Harrison presumed was her husband. “We’re his parents.”

  “Oh!” Harrison exclaimed. “Right! Yes. You better come in then.”

  “Much obliged,” Stephanie said.

  Harrison stepped aside and Stephanie stepped inside. “Do you want a hand with them?” he said to her husband, as he struggled with the cases.

  “Aye, aye, thanks, lad,” he said, thrusting a case in Harrison’s direction. “Appreciate it, thanks. I’m Colin, by the way.”

  Once they were inside, Stephanie stood in the middle of the room and looked around. “So, where is he?”