Let the Dead Speak: A gripping new thriller

‘Nope.’ Kev gestured at smudges on the woven surface. ‘Those are footprints and kneeprints. No detail, no definition. Give me a nice tiled floor any day.’

‘You’ve got the hall downstairs,’ Derwent said.

‘Except that we had people in and out with wet feet before I got here. The coppers had the sense to step carefully but the others …’ Kev raised his eyes to heaven. ‘You’d almost think it was deliberate. If it hadn’t been for the rain we’d have a lot more to go on.’

‘Who was that?’ I asked.

‘One of the two residents – a female aged eighteen – and one of the neighbours,’ Una Burt said. ‘He gave her a lift back from the station. They came in and found this. You’ll need to talk to both of them.’

I nodded and followed the trail to the small bathroom on the right, staying in the doorway because there was nowhere to stand that wasn’t covered in brownish red residue. The shower curtain hung down, ripped off most of its rings, streaked and splattered like the walls, like the ceiling, like the cracked mirror where we were reflected like a gathering of particularly awkward aliens. There were partial handprints on the sink, which was chipped, and the toilet. The seat had come away from the hinges on one side, so I could see the blood ran down inside the bowl, where it had settled thickly under the water.

It had been a white room, once.

‘Christ,’ Derwent said. ‘How many victims did you say there were?’

Una Burt ignored him. ‘This is the main location for the attack. It’s human nature to want to hide and there’s a lock on the bathroom door but this was the worst possible place to run to. It’s a small space with one exit and not much you could use to defend yourself. The attacker was able to stand in the doorway and cause maximum damage at his or her leisure.’

‘His, surely,’ Georgia said. Her eyes were round and very blue above the white mask, but her voice didn’t tremble.

‘Sexist,’ Derwent observed under his breath and she turned to look at him.

‘You can’t assume it was a man,’ I said. ‘You can’t assume anything.’

‘Indeed not. Come on.’ DCI Burt led us back towards the front of the house. ‘Down the hall beyond the bathroom there’s a further bedroom but it’s not disturbed and the blood trail doesn’t lead down there. It belongs to the daughter. This seems to have been used as a guest room.’

It was a large room with a bay window and a cast-iron fireplace on the wall opposite the door. The bed was rumpled. There was a chest of drawers in an alcove, but the bottles and brushes on top of it had been knocked askew. I couldn’t see any blood, but something else was all too evident.

‘What the fuck is that smell?’ Derwent stepped backwards.

‘Watch where you put your feet. The cat was shut in here,’ Kev explained.

‘For how long?’

‘That’s the interesting thing,’ Una said. ‘The daughter left here on Wednesday. It’s Sunday now. It would appear the cat defecated on three separate occasions and it obviously urinated as well, quite copiously.’

‘You’d think it would have run out of piss after a while.’ Derwent was crouching down, peering under the bed at the carpet.

‘Yes, but look at this.’ Una pointed to the corner of the room where there was a half-full bowl of water. I went over for a better view and saw short, fine hairs suspended in the liquid. I nudged the bowl with a gloved knuckle to check the carpet underneath, and the single circular mark told me that it was a one-off arrangement.

‘Someone locked the cat in here deliberately, but they didn’t want it to suffer. They didn’t bother with a litter tray but they left enough water that it could survive until the cavalry came. It could manage for three days without food but it couldn’t have lived without water.’

‘The girl was away from Wednesday,’ Derwent said. ‘Did anyone know she was coming back today?’

‘I don’t know. Maeve, you can ask her about that. I want you to interview her.’

I nodded as Derwent flashed me a look that said Don’t think I won’t try to come along just because you’re a detective sergeant now. I ignored him. He was still getting used to the idea of me being a little more senior, with more responsibilities and, crucially, more independence from him.

To be honest, so was I.

‘Who else lives here?’ I asked Una.

‘The girl’s mother, Kate Emery, aged forty-two. Her bedroom is upstairs.’

I leaned back to check: no blood on the stairs. ‘Was it disturbed?’

‘Not as far as we can tell. Not during or immediately after the attack, anyway. No blood.’

‘Is she the victim?’ Derwent asked.

‘We don’t know.’

‘Don’t you have a photograph of her?’ Georgia hesitated. ‘Or – or is the body too badly damaged to be identifiable?’

Una Burt exchanged a look with Kev that seemed to amuse them both. ‘Come downstairs and tell me what you make of it.’

It was strange how quickly you got used to the blood, all things considered. We picked our way down the stairs and already it was more like a puzzle than an outrage. That was how it would stay for the moment, and it was useful to have that detachment even if I knew it wouldn’t last. I followed Una Burt down the hall, Derwent treading on my heels he was so keen to see what lay ahead. On the left, under the stairs, there was a small shower room. She threw open the door and stood back.

‘Voila. What do you make of that?’

‘Is this where the attacker cleaned up?’ I scanned the walls, seeing faint brownish streaks on the tiles. ‘I smell bleach.’

‘And drain cleaner. Highly corrosive, designed to dissolve hair and dirt that blocks pipes. I found the bottle in the kitchen, in a cupboard. Homeowner’s property.’ Kev’s eyes crinkled as his mask flexed: he was actually smiling. ‘We know they were in here. We know they tidied up after themselves. What we don’t know is whether we’ll get anything useful from it.’

‘Great,’ I said, meaning the opposite. ‘What else?’

‘The blood trail goes into the kitchen and through the kitchen.’ Kev guided us into a smart white kitchen, pristine apart from the dried blood that dragged across the wooden floor and marked the corner of the cabinets. It was smeared across the doorframe and the handle of the back door. ‘And then it disappears. I’m not going to open the door because it opens outwards. It’s still raining cats and dogs and I don’t have a tent set up there yet. I don’t want to lose any of the marks on the inside of the door, but I can tell you what I found – or didn’t find. There’s a patio out there and I can’t currently locate a trace of blood, or a usable footprint, or anything that might tell us where our victim ended up. The rain has obliterated everything.’

‘So no body,’ I said.

‘No body,’ Una Burt confirmed. ‘At this stage we can’t even be certain who we’re looking for. We won’t be sure of that until the DNA results come back. What we do know so far is that Kate Emery hasn’t been seen since Wednesday night. We could run this as a missing person inquiry but I don’t want to waste time. She’s left her phone, her handbag, her wallet, her keys and a whole lot of blood behind. There’s no way someone loses that much blood and walks away. We’ll hope for a sighting of her alive and well, but what we’re really looking for is a corpse.’

3 (#uca7c8fc2-7de6-5dff-a549-b9edd58ca220)

The girl’s name was Chloe Emery. I checked it twice on my way across the road to the neighbour’s house where she was waiting, 32 Valerian Road. The ambulance I’d seen earlier had been for Chloe, Una Burt explained as we stripped off our protective gear in the tent outside the front door.

‘Went to pieces. Unsurprising, really. But she didn’t want treatment and she wouldn’t let them take her to hospital. They couldn’t force her. The girl needs a gentle conversation about her weekend plans – in particular who knew about them. She was with her dad in Oxfordshire, as I understand it. The parents are divorced. Dad’s remarried. Mum wasn’t.’

‘Seeing anyone?’ Derwent asked.

‘That’s something we need to find out. Obviously, I also want to know if anyone had a reason to harm her mother or her. Or if her mother had a reason to harm anyone, I suppose. Can’t rule that out.’

Derwent had patted me on the shoulder. ‘I’ll let you take the lead on that conversation, Kerrigan.’

‘You will, because you won’t be there. I want you to stay here,’ Una Burt said crisply. ‘You need to look after the crime scene for me.’

‘But I want to go and talk to the daughter.’

‘Kerrigan can take care of that on her own.’ To me, she said, ‘Take Georgia Shaw with you.’