Stone Killer

The Charlie Woodend Mysteries

THE SALTON KILLINGS

MURDER AT SWANN'S LAKE

DEATH OF A CAVE DWELLER

THE DARK LADY

THE GOLDEN MILE TO MURDER

DEAD ON CUE

THE RED HERRING

DEATH OF AN INNOCENT

THE ENEMY WITHIN

A DEATH LEFT HANGING

THE WITCH MAKER

THE BUTCHER BEYOND

DYING IN THE DARK

STONE KILLER

A LONG TIME DEAD

SINS OF THE FATHERS

DANGEROUS GAMES

DEATH WATCH

A DYING FALL

FATAL QUEST

The Monika Paniatowski Mysteries

THE DEAD HAND OF HISTORY

THE RING OF DEATH

ECHOES OF THE DEAD

BACKLASH

LAMBS TO THE SLAUGHTER

A WALK WITH THE DEAD

Table of Contents

Cover

By Sally Spencer

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Prologue

The Siege: Day One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

The Siege: Day Two

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

The Siege: Day Three

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

 

First published in Great Britain 2005 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

First published in the USA 2006 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

110 East 59
^th
Street New York, N. Y. 10022

eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2005 by Sally Spencer.

The right of Sally Spencer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Spencer, Sally

Stone killer

1.Woodend, Charlie (Fictitious character) – Fiction

2.Police – England – Fiction

3.Detective and mystery stories

I. Title

823.9'14 [F]

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-6294-5 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-44830-111-9 (ePub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

Too long a sacrifice

Can make a stone of the heart.

W. B. Yeats

T
he opportunity that Judith Maitland had been waiting for came early one morning in the prison kitchen, and it was presented to her by Mary Parkes, who was known to both inmates and staff alike as
Mad
Mary.

It was Mary's task, that morning, to stir the porridge which was slowly cooking in a large metal cauldron. She had not looked particularly delighted with her assignment from the start, and for the previous few minutes she had been muttering – quietly and desperately – to herself. Then, suddenly, she seemed to have reached her own personal breaking point and, stepping away from the cauldron, she began to wave her ladle wildly in the air and scream at the top of her voice.

There were four female warders on duty in various parts of the kitchen complex, and they quickly converged on the spot where Mary had chosen to create her scene.

The most senior of the warders, a hard-faced woman called Miss Donaldson, took a tentative step closer to the prisoner. ‘Put the implement down, Parkes,' she said firmly.

As if poor Mary Parkes had even the slightest idea what an ‘implement' was, Judith thought.

‘I said, “Put it down”,' Miss Donaldson repeated.

‘Goblins!' Mad Mary told her. ‘Goblins with hobnailed boots on their hairy little feet!'

‘What?' the warder asked.

‘Walkin' around in me head!' Mary elucidated. ‘Tramplin' on me brain! Turnin' it all to mush!'

Miss Donaldson sighed. ‘I don't care about what's going on in your head,' she said to the deranged woman with the ladle. ‘I have given you an order, and I expect you to obey it.'

Mary seemed undecided about how to respond, Judith thought. On the one hand, she clearly wanted to do as she'd been instructed. On the other, she had an almost overwhelming urge to express herself in one of the few ways still left open to her.

‘Last chance,' Miss Donaldson said heavily.

Last chance for what? Judith wondered. If Mary refused to obey, what would they do?
Lock her up in prison?

Mad Mary dropped the ladle, but instead of going limp – as she had been known to do after similar outbursts in the past – she immediately swung round, and turned her attention to the shelf on her left. The shelf in question was loaded down with tins of baked beans, large jars of jam and sacks of flour. For Mary, it presented just too much of a temptation, and using both hands, she swept the entire contents on to the floor.

The tins bounced, the bags burst open, the jars shattered – and the warders moved in. Two of the officers carried out a rapid flanking movement, and, once in position, pinned Mad Mary's arms behind her back. Now the prisoner was helpless, Miss Donaldson stepped forward and slapped Mary hard – several times – across her face.

She should never have done that, Judith thought sadly. Poor, demented Mary needed care and understanding, not cruelty.

The two officers who had a grip on Mary Parkes bundled her out of the room and into the corridor. Mary started screaming again, but the further she and her escort moved away from the kitchen, the fainter those desperate screams became.

Miss Donaldson ran her eyes quickly over the destruction. ‘Well, don't just stand there like bloody dummies, clear up this mess!' she said in a tone which suggested she thought the remaining prisoners were almost as responsible for it as Mary had been.

Still in shock, none of the inmates moved.

‘Didn't any of you hear me?' Miss Donaldson bellowed. ‘Did
you
hear me, Maitland?'

Judith nodded her head numbly.

‘Then answer me, you stupid bitch!' the warder demanded.

‘Yes, Miss Donaldson, I heard you,' Judith said.

‘So why are you still standing there as if you've got a broom handle stuck up your arse? You're supposed to know something about catering! Let's see you prove it.'

I
do
know about catering, Judith thought. In those far-off days of her other life – a life which now seemed to have belonged to someone else entirely – she had catered society weddings and municipal banquets. She had been so good at it that she'd been the most requested caterer in the whole North West. But her role had never included cleaning up a mess like the one which faced her now – a mess she would have felt diffident about asking her humblest employee to clear away.

‘Am I talking to myself?' the warder asked.

‘No, Miss Donaldson.'

‘Then get on with it, Maitland. And do it quickly – before I decide to report you for insolence.'

Maitland!
No one had ever called her that name before she entered this prison. It had been ‘Judith' or ‘Ma'am' or even ‘Mrs Maitland', but never just plain ‘Maitland'. Yet this was only one of the indignities – and a very minor one, at that – which she'd had to endure since those heavy steel gates had clanked irrevocably closed behind her.

Judith reached for a brush and large dustpan, and knelt down. With a professional eye, she examined the slicks of jam which floated in a sea of flour on the kitchen floor, and noted the occasional shard of glass which glinted in the overhead lights.

‘Be careful,' Miss Donaldson ordered from behind her head. ‘Don't go deliberately cutting yourself, Maitland, just so you can have a few lazy days in the infirmary.'

Judith began to brush the powdery-sticky mixture into the dustpan. Then, changing position slightly, so that Miss Donaldson could not see what she was doing, she picked up one of the smaller shards of glass and slipped it quickly into her overall pocket.

It seemed to be her lucky day – if lucky was the right word for it. First she had found what she had been looking so long for, and now the woman she shared her cell with had been called to the governor's office.

Sitting on her narrow bed, Judith examined the tiny sliver of glass which had once been a small part of the big institutional jam jar.

Who would ever have thought that this would be the answer to my prayers? she asked herself.

Though she tried to do so, she could not now exactly pin down the moment when vague thoughts of killing herself had transformed themselves into a firm determination to actually perform the act.

Perhaps it had happened in court. Standing in the dock – flanked by two mute and emotionless police officers, and listening to the judge pronounce his harsh sentence – she had certainly experienced a deep feeling of despair hitherto unknown to her.

Perhaps though, it had been when she first stepped from the prison van into the yard, and looked up at the imposing grey walls behind which she was to be detained for the greater part of her remaining years.

It could even have been later than that, she told herself.

She may not have decided to take her own life until she had truly understood how the weight of the prison regime – the monotony, the indignity – was slowly crushing her will.

Or maybe it had been her husband who, all unwittingly, had finally pushed her over the edge. Maybe it was the look in his eyes the last time he had visited her. They had been lively eyes before her arrest – sparkling eyes, eyes which showed how much he enjoyed life. But as he had gazed at her through the metal grille, she had seen only a hopelessness which had torn at her soul – and perhaps it was then she had decided to release both him and herself.

But it didn't really matter
when
it occurred, did it? The only significant thing was that it
had
.

She would leave no note behind, she had already decided. Suicide notes were for those who wanted to explain
why
they had chosen to take their own lives. The people who still had faith in her would clearly understand her reasons. And as for the rest – the police and the jurors, the journalists and the general public – who thought she was guilty as charged, well, they wouldn't believe her whatever words she left for them to read.