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
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.’
Derwent frowned. ‘Who the fuck is Georgia Shaw?’
‘New DC,’ I said.
‘The blonde?’
I nodded.
‘What’s she like?’
‘You’ll have to decide that for yourself,’ Georgia said, coming to stand beside me. I hadn’t noticed her but of course she was within earshot. She smoothed her hair, which was already immaculate. I was all too aware that no amount of finger-combing was going to sort my own hair out. Heat and rain were a deadly combination.
‘Georgia Shaw, Josh Derwent,’ Una Burt said. ‘He’s my detective inspector.’
My detective inspector. I hid a smile. It was a nice way of reminding Derwent who was the boss, in case he’d forgotten about it during his two weeks off.
Georgia put out her hand and I thought for a brief moment he was going to ignore it but he shook it, without enthusiasm.
‘We haven’t met. You’ve been on holidays since I joined the team.’
‘And now I’m not.’ He turned back to Una Burt. ‘Please let me go and talk to the girl.’
‘Don’t wheedle,’ she said. ‘I don’t like it and it won’t work.’ Her face softened very slightly. ‘NPAS is going to be overhead shortly and they need someone on the ground to help coordinate the search for the body.’ NPAS was the police helicopter; she was pulling out all the stops on this investigation. ‘There’ll be a dog unit and a search team. It’s not just babysitting Kev Cox.’
‘Great.’ He stretched, frustrated. ‘A search through a million gardens in the rain, looking for a missing body. What a welcome back.’
‘Don’t say I don’t find interesting murders for you to investigate.’ Una Burt nodded to me. ‘Get on with it.’
Which left me trying not to mind that Georgia was walking right behind me, leaning to read the notes I’d scrawled on my clipboard.
‘Are you going to ask her why she walked all over the footprints in the hall?’
‘I don’t expect to.’
‘Why not?’
I stopped and faced her. ‘Because I want to get to know her first. I want to get her to trust us. If I need to ask some hard questions, I will, but that’s not why we’re here. She’s the one person who can tell us what happened in that house before she left it last Wednesday, but she’ll only do that if she wants to help us.’
‘What if she did it?’
‘Did what? We don’t even know what happened.’ I turned away. ‘If she doesn’t want to help us find out where her mother is, that tells us something too. But I don’t want to give her a reason not to talk to us. That’s why DCI Burt found something else for DI Derwent to do.’
‘He seems fairly aggressive.’
‘Mm,’ I said, and Georgia could make of it what she liked. Derwent would either piss Chloe Emery off until a day after the end of time or win her heart forever. Extreme reactions were his speciality, and too high-risk for this particular situation.
‘Whose house is this?’ Georgia had dropped her voice to a whisper now that we were right outside the address, which was already a lot more subtle than Derwent would have been.
‘The neighbour who gave her a lift from the station and called 999.’ I checked my notes again. ‘Oliver Norris.’
‘Shouldn’t she have been kept away from him? Until we’ve spoken to them, I mean? In case they’re getting their stories straight.’