THE LOCK-UP

  A DCI BOYD THRILLER

  ALEX SCARROW

  Copyright © 2023 by Alex Scarrow

  All rights reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  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.

  Published by GrrBooks

  CONTENTS

  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

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Epilogue

  DCI BOYD RETURNS IN

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Alex Scarrow

  About the Author

  Dad, this is the Boyd book you never got a chance to read. I hope, if there’s some kind of afterlife, you can read it over my shoulder. This one’s for you. Miss you, mate. X

  1

  ‘All right, everyone! Thanks for turning up so early… but let’s have some quiet in here, please!’

  Colin Holmes turned away from the bellowing storage-unit manager to his friend and patted the wad of notes in his jacket pocket. ‘It’s this unit we want, Sid.’

  Sid had a wad of notes too, clutched tightly in both hands. ‘Why this one?’ he asked. ‘What’s so special about it?’

  Colin nodded at the yellow corrugated pull-up door, on which was stencilled ‘Unit 37’, Banksy style. ‘It’s one of the older ones. Look at the edges,’ he said, pointed them out. ‘The paint’s chipped.’

  From experience, Colin knew what to look out for. Frequent opening tended to chip the paint at the sides of the door and the storage company repainted them when the units became vacant.

  ‘Means it’s been used for ages. Might be full of old stuff that’s worth something,’ he said. He glanced at Sid. ‘You sure you’re okay with me doing the bidding?’

  Sid nodded. It was his first auction and he’d taken a giant leap of faith in stumping up his half of the money – five hundred quid was no small amount in these hard-pressed times. ‘Sure. Just don’t go mad, though.’

  Colin shook his head. ‘We’ve a ceiling bid of a grand. I promise. But we won’t get anywhere close to it, mate. Trust m–’

  ‘Quiet! Please!’ barked the manager.

  Colin shut up.

  ‘All right, then. Here we have Unit Thirty-Seven. Its ten-year lease expired last year and I’ve not been able to get hold of the renter, so its contents are up for grabs now. Right then, let’s start the bidding.’

  This morning, Colin noticed, only a small crowd of panners had turned up. And most of them had gone once the previous unit’s auction had run its course. That unit was so old that even the number itself had started to chip off the corrugated iron. The veteran panners had all been there for that one and the bid price had crept up to just over six hundred.

  ‘Starting bid of fifty!’ began the manager. ‘Let me hear fifty.’

  A hand raised beside Colin.

  ‘Fifty, bid. One hundred, anyone?’

  Colin cautiously side-eyed the other dozen or so bidders gathered there. Not yet. Hold on. Don’t look too keen. He kept his hand down. Another hand went up. The manager asked for one fifty and the first bidder raised his hand again.

  ‘Two hundred?’ the manager called out.

  Colin had managed to rally Sid into going halves with him fairly easily, because Sid’s second-hand shop was starting to look pretty bare. Colin had thought that the recession would have been a boom time for Sid, but quite the opposite had happened. No one seemed to be moving house or refurbishing and thus willing to part with resaleable household items just to be rid of them. And the people who did come into his old warehouse were after silly-priced, rock-bottom bargains. Sid was desperate for some super-cheap items that he could tart up and fill the floor with again.

  ‘Two fifty!’ The manager beamed at a ruddy-faced woman with frizzy long ginger hair tumbling down over her rounded shoulders and a T-shirt that bore a caricature of Harry and Meghan and the words ‘Ginge & Whinge’. ‘Thank you, love. Do I hear three hundred?’

  Colin chanced another glance at his fellow bidders. Interest seemed to be waning now.

  ‘Three hundred? Anyone?’

  Colin raised his hand with a show of vague interest.

  ‘Excellent! Three fifty, folks. Do I hear any advance on three fifty?’

  Frizzy Hair met Colin’s gaze with a steely ‘Don’t even go there, sonny’ expression on her face. ‘Three-fifty,’ she said.

  Bollocks.

  ‘Four hundred? What d’ya say?’ asked the manager, looking at Colin. Sid was staring at him too, urging him to go for it.

  Easy, thought Colin. Not too keen. Not too keen.

  He shrugged, pulled a face and began to make a show of turning away. Then, just as the manager was shifting towards the woman, Colin paused and raised a hand. ‘Go on, then. Let’s do four.’

  The manager nodded at him. ‘Four, it is. Ma’am?’

  Frizzy Hair curled her lip at Colin, then shook her head.

  ‘Four hundred! Four hundred!’ The manager hesitated before saying it a third time, then nodded at Colin. ‘It’s yours for four hundred.’

  It took a couple of minutes for Colin to fill in the paperwork: a GDPR form requiring him to hand over any items that might contain personal data for wiping; and a disclaimer excusing the storage business from liability of any injury sustained in clearing out the unit. He stood by Unit 37, waiting for the other panners to move on, to bid for the next auction unit. There were always loiterers, nosy buggers who wanted to get a glimpse of what they’d just missed out on.

  Frizzy Hair was one of them.

  ‘Excuse me?’ said Colin. ‘Are you waiting for something?’

  ‘Just curious,’ she replied testily.

  Sid, though, was eager to unlock the padlock and get a look inside. ‘Never mind her.’

  ‘Yeah, well…’ stalled Colin, glaring at her. ‘It’s my unit now, love. Why don’t you move along?’

  ‘Rude,’ she muttered. But she turned her back and finally strode away to catch up with the others who were now at the far end of the passage.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ said Sid. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got.’

  Colin released the padlock and bent down to grab the handle. ‘Ready?’ he said to Sid with a grin.

  Sid’s head bobbed frantically like a dashboard nodding dog.

  ‘All righty, then…’ said Colin. ‘Let’s see what treasure we’ve won.’ He jerked the sliding door upwards with a shrill screech of unoiled castors.

  He stared in silence for a few moments at the unit’s contents, then finally he sighed.

  ‘Oh… shit.’

  2

  Now, see… this is much better.

  There was actually room to stretch a little. Boyd had always been a restless sleeper, flipping from one side then to the other like a freshly landed tuna, as Julia had always said. In Charlotte’s modest double bed, with Ozzie and Mia taking up leg room at the bottom end, he’d been boxed in and committed to picking one carefully chosen Tetris position at lights out and sticking with it for the night. It was that or cause a Mexican wave of shuffling bodies as everyone reconfigured.

  His bed, however – his king-sized bed – afforded him the luxury of returning to his old habits with space to spare.

  The gulls were loud this morning, screeching with excitement as they swooped and dive- bombed above Ashburnham Road. Boyd presumed they knew it was a Thursday and the first weekend of June was just round the corner, with all the opportunities for airborne thuggery that that entailed: stealing ice creams from unsuspecting toddlers and chips from unguarded cardboard cones. The weekend DFLs and local out-
of-towners were lambs to the slaughter as far as the feathered mafia were concerned.

  He checked his watch. 6.05 a.m. It was far too early to stir. But – thank you, gulls – he was wide awake now and unlikely to get back to sleep. Instead, he turned to look at Charlotte, sleeping softly, her face lost beneath dishevelled locks of auburn hair. The hair fairies had clearly had a party with her last night. He gently lifted a tress to reveal her lips and nose. He couldn’t help but smile at the way her lips twitched in her sleep: pouting, then pursing, pouting, then pursing again. He wondered what she was dreaming about. Eating a Creme Egg? Counting ticket sales at the theatre?

  He settled onto his back and looked up at the high ceiling. There were mornings when he promised himself he’d bring the ladder up here and dust the numerous cobwebs from the picture rail and coving. Not today, though. Today his mind was on the Stephen Knight court case. It was Day Three, and Warren was due to step up to the witness stand this morning to do his bit. Knight was likely going down for those girls he murdered and hid in his Martello tower over three decades, but the clincher would almost certainly be his attempt to gut young DC Warren with his antique Napoleonic bayonet. Knight’s barrister was probably going to try to make the violent struggle look like self-defence at the hands of an overzealous and inexperienced young detective: ‘The blade? Well, as my client has already said, it fell off the wall during the struggle, Your Honour, and my client was in a state of alarm after DC Warren launched his unnecessary attack.’

  Boyd smiled. Right. Like that’s going to wash.

  Warren was shitting-bricks nervous, though. It was his first ever court attendance and Boyd knew that the young DC’s eyes would be frantically searching him out in the gallery for moral support – although Boyd hadn’t yet decided whether or not he should actually go to the court with him. Maybe it would be better if he just waited outside in the lobby. Either way, he’d planned to go into work an hour early to review Warren’s account of events with him one more time and to remind him, again, of all the witness-stand dos and don’ts.

  Boyd’s phone buzzed once on his side table to remind him to get up. He did so slowly, careful not to wake Charlotte. Ozzie and Mia hopped off the bed onto the floor as he pulled on his work clothes. Not the tired uniform that Sutherland insisted he wear while inhabiting his old office and temporary DSI role but a smart suit. Dark blue and actually ironed.

  Ozzie woofed. A test bark. He was getting ready to shout for his breakfast. Boyd raised a finger to hush him. ‘In a minute, mate,’ he whispered. ‘Just give me a bloody minute.’

  He needed to be in work for 8 a.m. Warren would be waiting for him, his printed-out statement clasped tightly in his trembling hands. Boyd laced up his old Oxfords, dangled a burgundy tie around the collar of his unbuttoned and untucked shirt and led the dogs out of the room.

  Mia and Ozzie headed along the landing, then tumbled down the stairs nosily – like a herd of bloody elephants, the pair of them – to wait for Boyd in the kitchen. He passed Emma’s door and lingered for a moment, curious to know if she was having another murmured early-morning conversation on her phone with Dan.

  Officially they had split up. But negotiations, it seemed, were ongoing. Looming fatherhood had scared Dan away, as Boyd had thought it might, but he wasn’t gone gone. They were talking still, at least.

  He heard nothing, so he started down the stairs, pausing and wincing for a moment at the slight pain in his side. It was like a jogger’s stitch that kept coming and going, with increasing regularity, but it tended to pass quickly. He hastened towards the kitchen to get the dogs’ breakfast served up before a noisy protest kicked off and woke everyone up.

  Ozzie was frantically jumping on the spot like dead weight on a bungee cord, while Mia circled Boyd’s legs daintily like a cat.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said with a sigh as he dug into the bag of kibble beneath the counter. ‘Dogs eat first.’

  3

  ‘Is that it?’

  Sid looked at the largely empty storage unit. The mental image he’d had moments before Colin had rattled the sliding door upwards – of a unit cluttered with antique furniture and exotic dusty curios – had come crashing down around him. He was presently staring at three stacks of blue plastic storage crates in the middle of the floor and a lot of absolutely nothing else.

  ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry, mate,’ said Colin.

  ‘Two hundred quid,’ muttered Sid.

  Colin’s face coloured at Sid’s disappointment. The old man had really needed a win, even a small one. ‘I honestly thought it was going to be a juicy one. I’m so sorry,’ Colin said again. ‘You can pick the unit we bid on next time. I just had a stupid feeling about this one.’

  Sid sighed. ‘Can’t help it, I s’pose, mate. Luck of the draw.’

  Colin stepped into the unit and pulled the door halfway down. The last thing either of them wanted right now was for one of the other panners peering in and guffawing at their bad luck.

  ‘Well, let’s see what’s in them, then,’ said Sid. ‘Maybe it’s some DVDs… I could try flogging them this Sunday.’

  ‘DVDs,’ repeated Colin. ‘I bloody hope not.’ He suspected the world’s landfills these days were a mix of DVDs, CDs and Covid-testing kits. Gone were the days when folks collected boxed-up movies, neatly stacked on MDF shelves in their home libraries. Every movie ever made was streamable from somewhere now, and, he reflected, pretty much nobody actually watched them any more… They were just background noise while people endlessly doom-scrolled on their phones.

  He approached the stacked crates and pulled out a Stanley knife as he spotted the packing tape wrapped generously around the plastic lids.

  ‘Could be comics, maybe?’ said Sid hopefully. Now those definitely did have a collectors’ market.

  There was still hope.

  Colin reached up to grab one of the topmost crates. ‘Christ, it’s heavy. Can you give me a hand?’ And Sid helped him ease it down onto the dusty floor.

  ‘Heavy is promising,’ grunted Sid. ‘Books, d’you think?’

  Sid’s warehouse had a corner devoted to worthy collectibles: sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and leather-bound Collected Works of Shakespeare that looked nice all lined up with their spines facing out.

  Colin gently slid the blade along the tightly taped edges of the lid. The packing tape had clearly been applied carefully, creating a proper seal. He grinned at Sid. ‘Maybe it’s a stack of signed Harry Potter first editions, hey?’

  Sid lifted one side of his bushy grey, walrus-like moustache with a wry smile. ‘Now that would be a bloody good find, wouldn’t it?’

  Colin finished slicing through the tape. He could feel the lid, loose in his hands, waiting for the big ‘Ta-da!’ lift-and-reveal.

  He puffed his lips. ‘Okay.’ And he pulled the lid off.

  Although it took their eyes a moment to work out what they were staring at, the fetid odour was unmistakable.

  4

  ‘You look like shit this morning, babycakes.’

  Okeke looked up from the kitchen table at Jay. ‘I had that frigging dream again,’ she said.

  ‘The ninja sword one?’