‘What about cars? Did you run plates for everything driving in or out of there from, say, half five to seven o’clock?’
One more creaking joist and Lucy was at the far door. She reached for the grimy Bakelite knob, then stopped. ‘Dunk?’
‘Ah. Don’t know. We weren’t doing that bit; Emma and me were on interviews.’
So worth chasing up, then.
Lucy pulled on a pair of blue nitrile gloves and turned the grubby handle. The door needed a couple of dunts with her shoulder — not easy while balancing on crumbly floor joists — but, eventually, its bottom edge scraped a squealing arc into the chipboard on the other side.
It was a small living room. Well, dying room would probably be more accurate, going by the crime-scene photographs. Environmental Health had been past with a big thing of trichloroethylene, and bleached Jackson Pollock spatters into the walls and floor, getting rid of any residual bodily fluids. Not that there would’ve been much left, not after all that time. A hollowed-out rectangle marked the middle of the opposite wall, where someone had ripped out the fireplace and mantel. Leaves and twigs made little drifts in the corners, mingling with the rat droppings. More holes in the floor, showing off the joists underneath, but this time wobbly lines scarred the chipboard sheets — where the Scenes Examination Branch had cut through them to get underneath. They’d nailed everything down again, but only just enough to stop some uniformed idiot going through the floor and suing. The room’s single window had long ago given up its glass, leaving nothing behind but a rotting wooden frame.
Lucy tested her weight on the first segment of nailed-down chipboard. It shifted a little underfoot but seemed safe enough. Kind of. So she stepped inside and flicked through the file till she got to the pictures. Held the first one out, shuffling her way further into the room until it lined up with the real thing — creating her own little time machine of horror.
4
The photo was less graphic than others in the Bloodsmith collection, but only because Abby Geddes had lain here, undiscovered, until May last year. A seven-month-long all-you-can-eat buffet for the rats. What was left looked more like something from a World War One documentary than a contemporary crime scene. Abby’s skull was tipped up on its side against the skirting board, no sign of her bottom jaw, ribs spread out across the chewed chipboard. The femurs were more or less where they should’ve been, but the pelvis had gone and so had all the fingers and toes.
A shattered jar sat between the radius and ulna of one arm, lid still on, the remnants of something dark sticking to the jagged glass.
Forensics identified it as Abby’s blood.
There was more of it on the far walclass="underline" ‘HELP ME!’ spelled out in three-foot-high letters, dried to a thick burnt umber. The message didn’t exist any more — erased by liberal application of trichloroethylene, but even though the super-strength bleach had removed all traces from the manky wallpaper, somehow the whole house still echoed with those two words, as if they’d been etched into the soul of the place.
The Dunk squeezed himself into the room. Pursing his lips as he looked around. ‘Can you imagine dying someplace like this?’
There wasn’t any reason to tiptoe, but Lucy did it anyway, picking her way over the patchwork boards to the largest hole in the floor. Peered down into the darkness. ‘The rats took everything small enough to carry.’ The beam from her phone’s torch picked out churned grey earth at the bottom of the hole, peppered with more droppings. ‘They only found about half the missing bits.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t the rats, maybe he took them.’
‘He didn’t take anyone else’s fingers. Other things, yes, but not fingers. Besides, all the bones had gnaw marks on them.’
‘Urgh...’ A shudder. ‘Did I mention how much I hate rats?’
She straightened up and frowned at the bleached wall again. ‘“Help me”. Do you think it was meant to be Abby talking? Is it her crying out, or is it him? Who are we supposed to save?’
‘Tell you, that James Herbert’s got a lot to answer for. Books gave me nightmares for—’
‘Shhh!’ Lucy switched off her faux torch and crept towards the hollow window. Keeping to the side, out of sight. ‘Did you hear that?’
The Dunk froze. ‘Is it rats? Gah... Please don’t let it be rats!’
She honed her voice into a hard sharp whisper. ‘Will you shut up and listen?’
He did what he was told, holding his breath.
There it was again: a rustling sound, like someone creeping through fallen leaves over rough ground.
The Dunk sidled up next to her. ‘I can’t hear anything.’
‘Clean your lugs out: there’s someone out there.’
He flattened himself against the wall on the other side of the window. Peered around the edge. ‘Could be a deer, or a badger, or something?’
Lucy narrowed her eyes and stared out into the gloom. Letting her eyes drift out of focus so the trees, bracken, and brambles all merged into a green-brown mush. Not looking for shapes, just motion...
A flicker of tan-coloured fabric, and the rustling stopped.
Got you.
She slipped out of the dying room and picked her way across those crumbling joists to the front door, with the Dunk creeping along behind her.
The pair of them hunkered down beside the empty doorframe.
‘Where we going, Sarge?’
‘Ten o’clock: thirty, thirty-five feet away. He’s slipped behind a Scots pine.’
A nod. ‘On three?’
‘Two, one.’ And Lucy was out through the open doorway in a silent crouching jog. Skimming over the tussocked front garden. Hurdling the tumbledown wall. Glasses misting as they hit the warmer air.
The sound of puffing and panting boomed out behind her, then a strangled ‘Shite!’ and a crash.
She slithered to a halt, spinning around... and there was the Dunk, sprawled flat on his front at the end of a three-foot skidmark in the bracken.
He spat out a mouthful of pine needles. ‘Go, go!’
Clumsy sod.
She was off again, making for the Scots pine. No point trying to be stealthy about it now — not with the Dunk going his full length. ‘STOP, POLICE!’
Whoever was hiding behind the tree ran for it — the sound of snapping branches joining the thump-thump-thump of their feet. Going at a fair speed, too.
Lucy picked up the pace, elbows pumping, boots digging into the forest loam, huffing the breaths in and out, hands jabbing the air. Dodging between trunks, leaping over twisted knots of roots and lumps of vegetation. Ducking under low-hanging branches.
Trying to close the gap... and failing.
Whoever it was: they were fast. Leaving nothing behind but those flashes of tan fabric, glimpsed between the boughs of closely packed trees. Some sort of suit? No, the jacket was definitely a couple of shades darker than the trousers.
And what the hell was he doing in the middle of Moncuir Wood? Lurking outside the cottage where Abby Geddes became the Bloodsmith’s first victim? No — no way there was an innocent explanation for that.
He crashed through a waist-high expanse of dead nettles, setting the grey stalks crackling.
Lucy gritted her teeth and smashed through them too, lungs burning.
Come on: faster.
He jinked off to the right, and she followed. Up a steep slope, feet slipping in the fallen leaf-litter, thighs aching, grabbing branches to keep herself upright and shredding her nitrile gloves in the process. Bastard was like a mountain goat, leaping up the hill as if it was barely there. Stretching his lead. Getting away. Disappearing over the crest.