Another push and Lucy scrambled to the top of the slope and—
‘AAAAARGH!’
The ground fell away right in front of her, plummeting straight down, about twenty feet, to a mound of fly-tipped crap. Most of which looked very rusty and very sharp.
Her arms windmilled, hauling her shoulders and head backwards, feet slithering on the pine-needle floor. One hand grabbing onto the ragged branch of a dead spruce. Keeping herself from tipping over the edge onto the death-trap rubbish below.
Lucy pulled herself back to safety. ‘Jesus...’
Where the hell did he...?
She stood there, breathing hard, eyes scanning the forest.
There: on the other side of the hollow. A man. Curly brown hair with flashes of a high forehead. Corduroy jacket and chinos. Still running, and too far away to catch now. He slowed to a jog, then a walk. Looked back over his shoulder at her, showing off his beard and moustache. The light glinting off his small round glasses.
Son of a bitch.
It was the guy from that morning, the one who’d been staring at her across St Jasper’s Lane. Had he followed them here?
He stopped for a moment and stood there, watching her watching him, then turned and disappeared into the woods.
She’d lost him.
The Dunk was sitting on the tumbledown wall outside the cottage when she got back. His expression wasn’t exactly what you’d call happy. Anyone would think he’d just fallen flat on his face and ended up covered in dirt, mud, bits of pine needles, and smears of green. Could curdle water with that face, Tony Stark beard or not. A fresh cigarette glowered away in the corner of his mouth, the end slightly crumpled, as if he’d landed on the packet.
He picked a couple of needles from his filthy black polo neck. ‘You lost the guy?’
Startling powers of deduction, there.
‘Loving your new look.’ Lucy snapped off what was left of her gloves and stuffed them in her pocket. ‘Sort of like a Goth Worzel Gummidge.’
He held up his mobile phone, screen out. ‘I’ve called the boss; they’re on their way.’
‘Not much point: he’s long gone. Was off like a whippet with a firework up its—’
‘Oh, there’s a point all right.’ The Dunk hopped down from his wall and stomped back towards the cottage. ‘Trust me, Sarge, you need to see this.’
OK...
At the front door he pulled out his phone and fiddled with the thing till a circle of cold white LED light played across the manky hallway. But this time the Dunk didn’t go into the dying room, instead he balanced himself on the exposed floor joists at the end of the corridor and hauled open the last door on the left-hand wall. It opened towards her, hiding whatever was inside. ‘You’re going to want to put on fresh gloves.’ Then he disappeared.
She snapped on a new pair of nitriles, turned on her mobile’s torch, and picked her way across the joists.
The door hid a narrow set of stairs that was almost steep enough to qualify as a ladder — its dark wood speckled with more tiny woodworm holes. Probably not the safest, then.
His voice echoed down from above. ‘You coming?’
‘No, I’m having a nap.’ The steps creaked and moaned beneath her feet, but they held as she climbed the half-dozen or so treads, until her head emerged into a semi-floored attic with a landing at the top of the stairs so narrow that the Dunk pretty much filled it.
The air was thick with the sharp gritty stench of rats and mildew, the only light filtering in through a narrow, cobweb-frosted pane in the roof. Most of the space to the left was open rafters and curled dust-grey loft insulation, but someone had erected a wooden partition just to the right of the stairs — with what looked like a wardrobe door set into it.
‘Ready?’ The Dunk took hold of the small metal catch and swung the door open. ‘Better stay out here, though.’
It’d be tempting to say he was milking this, but going by the expression on his face, the Dunk wasn’t enjoying it much.
Lucy climbed up into the loft space and squeezed past him. Peered around the wardrobe door.
Narnia had gone downhill a bit.
It was a cramped little room, with rough floorboards and a threadbare brown rug. A window the size of a shoebox graced the gable end, lifting the gloom just enough to make out vague shapes. Her torch did a much better job, revealing a collapsed metal bedframe, complete with ruptured horsehair mattress; a steamer-style trunk, lying open for the spiders to decorate; and a dilapidated armchair that was missing a leg, tilted over to one side like a drunken pirate.
‘So, what am I—’
‘On your left.’
She swung her phone around and its light raked the water-stained coombed ceiling. At some point in the distant past, whoever lived here had nailed boards up between the roof joists, but the wood had rotted away in a couple of places, exposing the rags and straw stuffed in there for insulation.
And then her torch beam settled on what the Dunk’s pantomime mysterious act had been all about. ‘Sodding hell...’
Two words were scrawled on the boards in three-foot-high letters. They’d probably been bright scarlet, once, but they’d dried to a coagulated brown: ‘HELP ME!’
DI Tudor paced the length of the kitchen and back again, one hand squeezing his temples, the other gripping his phone to his ear tight enough to turn the knuckles pale as frozen butter. A wraith in the gloom. ‘Yes, sir, I’m absolutely positive it definitely wasn’t there before.’ He stopped pacing to stare at the ceiling for a moment. ‘Because we’ve got photographs of every room in the house, and the only wall the Bloodsmith wrote on was where we found Abby Geddes’s remains.’
The room had been stripped bare, leaving nothing but the corpse of a cracked Belfast sink, a couple of sagging shelves, and the rusted body of a long-dead wood-fired stove. Not too many holes in the floor, which made it perfect for pacing up and down, looking miserable, and talking to senior officers on the phone.
Lucy backed out and eased the door closed, leaving him to it.
An SOC-suited figure lumbered into the cottage, carrying a big square stainless-steel case as if it weighed as much as a small child. Then stood there, blocking the corridor while a couple of his mates kicked and shoved the attic door back as far as it would go — digging the Bakelite handle into the plaster wall — then forcing a brand-new sheet of sterling board down, creating a makeshift floor on the no-longer-exposed joists.
They gave their mate the thumbs up and he clambered up the near-vertical stairs and out of sight, taking his case with him.
Who knew, maybe they’d get lucky and find something?
Probably not, though.
Lucy slipped through the front door into the dingy clearing.
A quad bike and trailer were parked just beyond the garden wall, where a lone, large, pink-faced woman was wriggling her way into a rustling white Tyvek suit.
Lucy caught her as she was pulling a pair of blue plastic bootees on over her Dr Martens. ‘I need a favour.’
‘Oh aye?’ Zipping herself up before plucking a facemask from its box. ‘And is this favour legal?’
‘Someone was hiding behind that tree, there.’ Pointing at the Scots pine. ‘If they’ve left fingerprints...?’
She curled her lip. ‘Fingerprints on bark? And what do you want for your second wish, a unicorn? World peace?’
‘OK: DNA, then.’
‘And you’re authorized to approve the additional budget for DNA testing, are you? Cos this stuff don’t come cheap.’