Run rabbit run, p.1
Run Rabbit Run, page 1
Run Rabbit Run
A DCI Robert Kett Novel
Alex Smith
RUN RABBIT RUN
Published Worldwide by Relentless Media.
This edition published in 2020.
Copyright © 2020 by Alex Smith
The right of Alex Smith to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
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.
Edited by Hanna Elizabeth
1.0.1
www.alexsmithbooks.com
relentless.media
Also by Alex Smith
The DCI Robert Kett Thrillers
Paper Girls
Bad Dog
Three Little Pigs
Whip Crack
Run Rabbit Run
Stone Cold Dead
(Available to preorder)
Cry Baby: A Novella
The Softley Softley Thrillers
The Harder They Fall
Hard Luck House (Coming Soon)
Other Books
Six Days, Six Hours, Six Minutes
For Antoinette, with thanks.
Wishing you the very best of luck as you embark upon your own criminal career!
Contents
The Official DCI Kett Files
A Note From Alex
Prologue
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
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
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
DCI Kett Returns in…
STONE COLD DEAD
THE OFFICIAL DCI KETT FILES
About the Author
Sign Up For DCI Kett Exclusives!
More Great Reads
The Official DCI Kett Files
Run Rabbit Run is the fifth book in the DCI Kett Crime Thriller series, and references several previous cases. Case summaries for Paper Girls and Three Little Pigs can be found at the end of this book.
A Note From Alex
Dear reader,
I hope this message finds you safe and well during the ongoing pandemic.
I never know whether to write a note here or not, but it’s nice to have the chance to say hello before you begin the next DCI Kett adventure. It’s great for me to know that you are out there!
I honestly thought that when this book was published at the tail end of 2020, lockdown would be a thing of the past. But here we are in yet another one. These are lonely times, and I for one am infinitely grateful to books for keeping me sane. That’s the incredible thing about stories, they let us travel anywhere and experience so many lives even when we’re stuck at home. We may be in lockdown, but books set us free.
I genuinely hope that this book distracts you from the real world for a little while, and reminds you that however bad lockdown feels, you are not alone!
Thank you to everyone who has read my books and been in touch, it’s wonderful to know that there is such an amazing community of readers out there, and your company and support is greatly appreciated.
Sending the very best of wishes to you and your loved ones from lockdown here in Norwich.
Alex
Prologue
Wednesday
“You look like you’re about to shit yourself, mate.”
Christian Stillwater did his best to ignore the comment, even though it ricocheted around his aching head like a bullet. Two inmates stood to his right in the wide, white-walled corridor that led to the canteen, close enough for him to almost taste the sourness of their sweat. There was space for them to pass, but things didn’t work that way in prison. You were an obstacle here whether you liked it or not. He pressed against the wall to make himself as small as possible, trying not to put any weight on his ruined right knee.
“Chicken shit,” said the other man, adding a squawk for good measure.
They were wrong, though. He wasn’t afraid. He wasn’t sure he even knew what fear felt like. Ever since he’d been a child he’d found it hard to identify his emotions. Terror, joy, sorrow, grief, excitement—they’d always felt the same to him, a kind of pressure in the middle of his head, the sensation of an egg breaking inside the numb and muffled nest of his thoughts. He’d been smart enough, growing up, to learn how to mimic the feelings he saw in other people, to plaster smiles over his face, to squeeze out tears when they were needed, but he couldn’t remember a single time when an emotion had felt real.
Until recently, that was.
Until the anger.
“Move it, nonce.”
The first inmate shouldered past Stillwater, hard enough to knock him against the cold wall. It was like a bomb had detonated inside his leg and he had to adjust his position to stop from falling. He managed to close his mouth around the cry, his head seeming to stretch and balloon with the effort—like a cartoon character who’s swallowed a bomb. He stared at the man for all of a second before letting his gaze drop. He’d learned on his first day here that nothing would incite violence faster than a wrongly timed look.
The two men passed, laughing, and Stillwater swallowed hard. The anger coiled and stirred inside him like a living thing, like a dragon demanding freedom. He pushed himself straight, pulses of light strobing the prison walls like an alarm going off. The inmates were walking away from him with the same swagger they all had here, and Stillwater allowed himself to imagine driving a blade into the soft spot at the back of their necks, pushing it into the tender flesh of their brains—one after the other. There was no sense of satisfaction there, though, no relief. Just the same pathetic, impotent rage.
Rage against one man. The man who’d put him here.
Robert Kett.
“No loitering, Stillwater.”
The squat, bearded prison officer was strutting up the corridor like he was king of the castle. The man was pathetic, Stillwater thought. He didn’t even deserve to be alive. He was on his list of people who would suffer a brutal death just as soon as his leg was better, as soon as his thoughts were clearer, as soon as he figured out a plan.
“I mean it,” the officer said. “You either go eat or move on.”
“I can’t eat,” Stillwater growled, baring teeth that had already started to turn brown. “They won’t let me.”
It was the same every day. It was almost impossible for him to carry his tray to a table, and the other prisoners would do everything they could to knock it out of his hands. Some days he didn’t eat at all. Some days he was so hungry he had to scoop the slop right off the floor. The fury inside him breathed a plume of fire, so bright that for a moment he couldn’t see anything past it. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair.
“They won’t let you eat?” the officer said. “That’s a problem.”
Stillwater nodded, swallowing air down his sandpaper-dry throat. The man leaned in, so close that his cheap aftershave was thick enough to drown in.
“But it isn’t my problem,” he said in a low voice. “If you’d wanted to eat, maybe you shouldn’t have tried to murder those little girls. Now get the fuck out of my sight.”
He was close enough to bite, Stillwater thought. He could clamp his teeth around the man’s nose and chew it off, see if he looked so smug then. But all he did was push himself from the wall and limp away, each step sending a brilliantly bright bolt of agony from his heel all the way to the back of his head, as if somebody had laced a strip of electric wire through him.
He’d do it one day, when he wasn’t taking so many painkillers, when he could think straight again. He’d get all of them: the inmates, the guards, the police that had dragged him here. He’d get that bitch who’d snapped his knee with her baton. And he’d get Kett. He’d find out where he lived and he’d kill him slowly, him and everyone he loved. He’d show them all that they’d fucked with the wrong man.
“Stupid pricks,” he said as he shuffled on, one shoulder sliding along the wall to stop him from falling.
They’d been so close to getting away with it. One more night and those newspaper girls would have been dead and gone and nobody would have known any better. The plan had been perfect—Raymond Figg’s plan, admittedly, but he had contributed more than his fair share of ideas. Three killers, three victims, a web of lies and alibis that should have stumped the police. Even now, he could remember the way it had felt when he’d had that skinny bitch in his arms, how good it had
They’d been so close.
Then he’d shown up.
It wasn’t fair.
Stillwater limped into the cell block, into the rumble of voices and the stink of the men who gathered there. He ignored the shouts that were directed his way, ignored the bodies that closed in on him, the pressure of promised violence. If they truly knew who they were dealing with, if they knew what he was capable of, then they would be cowering on the other side of the room. These pricks were in here because they were idiots and their crimes were meaningless. Drugs, burglaries, senseless murders. They were Neanderthals, every last one of them. He, though, was a genius. He didn’t deserve to be—
The push caught him unawares and he fell hard, the pool table kicking him in the ribs like a horse and his forehead cracking against the floor. The agony in his leg made the whole world shriek, and for a second everything was butchered into darkness. It was the laughter that brought him back, the room full of it like he was a performer on stage.
“Whoops,” he heard somebody say past the ringing in his ears. “Didn’t see you there. You okay?”
More laughter. Stillwater struggled up, a ball of vomit working its way from his stomach and settling in his throat. He had to grab the corner of the pool table, ratcheting his mangled knee around inch by inch until it was at the right angle to hold him. He grit his teeth so that he wouldn’t scream but the noise still spilled from him.
He couldn’t even see who’d pushed him. His eyes were full of tears from the pain, and once again those lights pulsed against the room like a faulty projector. He heard a barked order from another prison officer and felt the swell of prisoners move away. The stairs were ahead of him, an outline in the fog, and he made for them. This was the worst part of his day, the endless stairs. They could have given him a cell on the ground floor, but they’d put him on the next level up and getting there was like scaling Everest. He took it slow—like he had any other choice—hauling himself from step to step with a soundtrack of gasps and sobs.
He stopped at the top to catch his breath, and to let the inferno ebb from his knee. Then he fixed his mind on revenge again, the only fuel that seemed to get him moving. He pictured himself setting fire to the prison, watching the inmates curl up and crisp. He’d be the last thing they ever saw, his face would grin down on them like the fucking moon as they took their last, searing breaths. Maybe I’ll burn Kett too, he thought, seeing it in his mind’s eye for long enough to know that it would be too quick a death for him. No, his suffering would go on for days. For weeks.
He groped his way along the narrow platform, sucking down air that seemed to have run out of oxygen a long time ago. People eyeballed him from their cells, not a friendly face in sight. Nobody had looked at him with kindness for months, but he didn’t care. He didn’t need kindness. He didn’t need anything except the thrill of having a clear, beautiful purpose.
A mission.
When he was out of here he’d find another child to take. He’d find Delia Crossan, too. He’d find his little newspaper girl and finish what he’d started, kill her just like he had killed her mum. There would be no subtlety about it this time, he would strike hard and fast and he would savour it.
Finally, after what felt like months, he arrived at his cell. Stepping into it was like finding an inflatable on a rough sea and he took a deep, shuddering breath. His relief only lasted as long as it took for him to hear his cellmate’s laughter from the top bunk.
“Fucked you up good and proper, didn’t they?” said Johnny Mayhew, his accent pure Liverpool.
Stillwater scrubbed the back of his hand over his eyes, smudging the tears away before the other man could see them. Mayhew wasn’t the worst of the pricks who lived here. Short, skinny as a rake, he’d murdered somebody in a row over something so inane that Stillwater couldn’t even remember what it was. He glanced up at him, seeing the crop of ginger hair on the pillow. Mayhew had fixed a microscopic strand of silver tinsel to the bar, the only Christmas decoration he’d seen in the entire facility even though it was only a couple of weeks away.
“Like I give a shit,” Stillwater said. “They’ll get what’s coming to them.”
“Course they will,” Mayhew grunted, his voice full of laughter. “Regular vigilante you are.”
Stillwater swore at him beneath his breath as he lowered himself onto the bottom bunk. Pops and hisses spilled from his lips like hydraulics as he went, ending with a cry that just wouldn’t stay in. For a moment the horror of it crushed him, thirty years inside this building, thirty years of agony, thirty years of this same, unbearable rage.
“You ever think you’d be better off like them others?” said Mayhew, sniffing hard. The bed creaked like a sinking ship as the man above turned over.
“What others?” Stillwater asked.
“The two men you was in it with. Raymond Figg, wasn’t it? Can’t remember the other one. Both dead. Gorra be better than this.”
Stillwater frowned, wondering how the man had managed to pull the thoughts right out of his skull.
“One of them drowned in his own shit, didn’t he?” Mayhew asked.
“So they tell me,” said Stillwater. It had been Raymond Figg. He’d been stabbed by the other man, Lochy Percival, and they’d fallen into the aeration basin of the sewage works. Stillwater hadn’t seen it, of course. He’d been in cuffs and agony inside the house with that bitch police constable watching over him.
“Bad way to go, even for a man like him,” Mayhew said.
Stillwater grunted. Figg had deserved it. He’d been too cocky. He’d given too much away and led Kett right to their door.
“How’d you even meet him, anyways?” Mayhew said, sniffing again. He was always sniffing, every five fucking seconds day and night. Stillwater had dreamed about ramming something so far up his nose he’d never sniff again.
“Why do you care?” he asked. He wanted to lie down but he didn’t think he’d be able to get his leg on the bed, and the ache in his skull was fast evolving into a migraine, one that would get infinitely worse if he moved.
“Just curious,” Mayhew said. “Different world out there at the moment, isn’t it? Used to be we all suffered alone, but now any fucker can find a mate on the web. That where you found each other? Kid killers anonymous dot com?”
“Fuck off,” said Stillwater, and Mayhew laughed.
“Alright, calm your tits, I’m just curious. You see me, I found people online, people who told me how to kill a man. No shortage of them out there. Half of them are on Facebook, if you believe it.”
Stillwater snorted air through his nose. He did believe it, because he’d seen it himself. Figg had spoken to dozens of people in chat rooms deep inside the internet’s darkest places. He’d had a laptop full of them, although he’d only shared a handful of these conversations with Stillwater.
“I guess you’d have to be in the know, though,” came Mayhew’s nasal whine. “Fella like you wouldn’t have a clue about where to start.”
