For Reasons Unknown: A gripping crime debut that keeps you guessing until the last page

‘Jonathan, we’ve been looking for your brother but we can’t seem to find him. Do you know where he might be?’

Jonathan stopped drawing and looked up as if in thought. He looked across to Dr McCartney and fixed her with an expressionless stare, then returned his attention back to his drawing.

‘Jonathan, we need to find your brother. It’s very important. Do you know any of his friends?’

The door opened and Detective Sergeant Pat Campbell popped her head into the room. She looked haggard, having been on duty for more than twenty hours. She signalled for Dr McCartney to join her in the corridor.

‘Why didn’t that PC change out of his bloody uniform as I told him to?’ she asked before the DS could speak.

‘I don’t know. He should have done.’ The DS sighed and looked to the ceiling. ‘Has the boy said anything?’

‘Not yet.’

‘It is paramount we find his brother.’

‘I heard that his mother was still alive. How is she?’

‘I don’t know where you heard that from. Both parents were pronounced dead at the scene. They were hacked to death.’

‘Jesus. Well he doesn’t need to know any of that. Not now at any rate.’

‘We’ve managed to locate a relative in Newcastle. She’s coming straight down, but it’ll be a few hours before she gets here. Look, whatever happened in that house, he saw it, or at least heard it, and I need to know.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

Pat Campbell looked over the doctor’s shoulder, through the narrow glass window in the door, and into the room at the young boy drawing as if nothing extraordinary had happened. ‘How does he seem?’

‘He’s in a complete shutdown, which isn’t uncommon. When it comes to anything traumatic sometimes our brain takes time to come to terms with it and until it does, it shuts down. It’s a self-preservation thing.’

‘So he’ll soon come out of…whatever this is, and be able to tell us what happened?’

‘In theory, yes.’

‘Why only in theory?’

‘Depending on what he saw his brain may not want him to remember.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Campbell said, leaning back against the wall for support. ‘What’s with the drawings?’

‘It’s a way of helping young children come to terms with what they’ve witnessed. Whatever they draw is usually an indication of what’s going on in their heads. Hopefully it will help to understand what went on in that house, and then we can take our therapy from there.’

‘And what’s he drawn so far?’

‘He’s drawn his house with a tree next to it.’

‘Does that tell you anything significant?’

‘Not yet,’ she half smiled. ‘It’s early days. He’s clearly looking at what happened from the outside. If his next drawing is also a house, I’ll ask him about the inside and see what he draws when I talk about the rooms in the house.’

Pat shook her head. ‘My God, the mind is a powerful thing isn’t it? I don’t envy your job.’

There was nothing the doctor could say to that. There were times she didn’t envy her job either. ‘Is there any chance of getting him in some of his own clothes? That sodding tracksuit stinks.’

‘I’ll get something brought over from the house.’

‘And how about a glass of milk and some chocolate?’

‘Whatever you want.’

‘Thank you.’

She turned and went back into the room. Jonathan had drawn two adults, a child, and was currently on a second child: his family. Dr McCartney bent down next to him and watched him draw in the details: the hair, the clothes, the eyes, the smiles. He then picked up a red felt-tip and with a forceful action that caused the doctor and PC to jump, he scribbled all over the picture. He didn’t stop until his mother, father, and brother were completely covered in blood.

Chapter 1 (#u2c0f2d3c-643d-51d2-8892-56f73442f821)

Twenty years later

Matilda Darke had been looking forward to this day for nine months. In that time she had been through a painful miasma of emotions; from a deep depression where she wanted to spend the rest of her life under the duvet, to mild hysteria where tears would flow like a swollen river for no apparent reason. Now, after a long course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, weekly sessions with a psychologist, and popping antidepressants as if they were about to be rationed, she was back to her fighting best, she told herself.

It was the first Monday in December. She’d woken two hours before the alarm, to a freezing cold house. The central heating had failed to switch on, and, according to the digital thermometer on her windowsill, it was minus four degrees outside. It wasn’t much warmer inside.

She showered longer than usual, until the blood in her veins thawed and was flowing around her body once more, then forced down a breakfast of black coffee and two slices of granary toast. Chewing was a chore. Part of her was excited to return to work, hold her head up high and show the world she was still a force to be reckoned with. Another part of her was crying inside and longing for the security of her duvet once again.

Her three-year-old Ford Focus stuttered in the cold but didn’t take too long to warm up. It was as if it knew she wanted a smooth ride with no trouble on her first day back.

The twenty-minute journey went without a hitch, and she was soon turning into the familiar car park. It was as if she had never been away. She took a deep breath, allowed herself a little smile, and turned left to her usual parking space.

Matilda quickly slammed on the brakes and gripped the steering wheel tightly. Her heart beat rapidly in her chest and the prickly sensation of an oncoming panic attack rose up the back of her neck.

‘Walpole, Compton, Pelham, Newcastle, Devonshire,’ she whispered under her breath.

She looked ahead at the brand-new black Audi in her parking space. Who did it belong to? Had the owner not been informed of her return? She had a lump in her throat that was hard to swallow. Suddenly she didn’t think coming back was such a good idea.

Fifteen minutes later, after finding an empty parking space at the back of the building, she was sitting on an uncomfortable chair, the padding in the seat dangling out, waiting to be called into her boss’s office.

She looked around the small anteroom at the cheap framed prints on the walls. There was a tall vase of plastic flowers in the corner; each fake petal had a thick layer of dust, dulling the lively colours to a pathetic grey. There was a sharp smell of pine disinfectant in the air, which was itching at the back of her throat.

The light above the door turned from red to green.

‘Shit,’ she said to herself. ‘Here we go.’

She stood up and straightened her new navy trouser suit. It was the first new item of clothing she’d bought in over a year, and it had been an unwelcome surprise to find she’d gone up a dress size. She ran her fingers through her dark blonde hair, which had been neatly trimmed only last week. Matilda was forty-one years old, and felt like she was about to enter the head teacher’s office to be told off for cheating on her maths test.

Before pushing down the door handle she looked at her hands; they were shaking. This was not a good sign.

‘Oh my goodness, look at you.’ Every word was said as if a sentence of its own. It was highly unprofessional, but Assistant Chief Constable Valerie Masterson leapt up from behind her oversized desk and took Matilda in a tight embrace. ‘Sit yourself down. I have a pot of coffee just made.’

They sat at opposite sides of the desk, which dwarfed the slight frame of the ACC. They examined each other in silence for a long minute.