‘Been quite a day. Got a long hot bath and an ice-cold bottle of Pinot Grigio with my name on it.’
‘OK.’ His brow furrowed, mouth twitching behind pursed lips, as if he was wrestling with something in there. ‘This guy who’s been following you—’
‘Don’t worry about it. Can take care of myself, remember?’ Then she dipped into her overcoat pocket and pulled out DI Tudor’s rape alarm. ‘Besides, the boss gave me this.’
‘Good. Yeah. Right.’ Nodding with each word. ‘You’re parked that way?’ He pointed away down the road. ‘Mind if I tag along for a bit? Johnson’s getting on my tits and I figure a poke of chips and a walk will help.’
She loomed. ‘I’m not some weak and feeble woman who needs protecting!’
‘Yeah, I know that, Sarge. But Johnson’s much bigger than me, and if I swing for him, he’ll probably take my head off.’
Her old Kia Picanto scrunched onto the gravel driveway, headlights sweeping across the three houses on the other side of the road, leaving them in darkness as she killed the engine. Only three miles north of the city, but from here you wouldn’t even know Oldcastle existed, if it wasn’t for the dirty orange smear, reflected off the low clouds. The rest of it was hidden from view by Auld Dawson’s Wood, lurking behind the homes opposite like a large dark beast. Its spines creaking and rustling in the wind.
Not that Ballrochie offered much to pounce on. A trio of farmworker’s cottages, and the grieve’s house — which merited a whole two storeys and a garage, because he’d been in charge and the lower classes needed to know their place.
Lucy grabbed her files from the back seat and let herself into the granite-and-sandstone status symbol. Locked the front door behind her and dumped her keys in a bowl on the sideboard. Hung her overcoat on its hook. ‘Honey, I’m ho-ome.’
No answer, as usual.
She took off her boots and lined them up with the other pairs arranged on the rack in the hallway. Looked at the stranger in the mirror. Practised smiling at them, like her therapist always used to bang on about:
It’s neuro-linguistic programming, Lucy... Smiling releases endorphins, even if you don’t feel happy, Lucy... Smile and you’ll trick your brain into feeling better, Lucy.
But then, like Detective Constable Steve Johnson, he’d always been a dick.
She gave one last rictus grimace a count of ten, then huffed out a breath. Sagged. And stomped off upstairs to change.
Her bedroom was smaller than Dad’s, which didn’t really make any sense. It was her house now: she could sleep wherever she liked. All she’d have to do was move his stuff out of the wardrobes and chest of drawers. Take it down the charity shop. Give the place a lick of paint. Buy some fresh bedding. Get herself a new mattress and pillows too. Easy.
Still, no point rushing these things.
Maybe after Christmas?
She swapped the work outfit for an old hoodie and pair of sweats. Turquoise Crocs rounded off the ensemble. Not exactly stylish, but who was going to see?
Next up: cup of tea.
Down in the kitchen, Lucy set the kettle boiling while she fished sliced white out of the bread bin. A bit stale, but it toasted up fine. Earl Grey, slice of lemon, toast with a smear of butter and Marmite. Crunching down on a darkly savoury mouthful as she wandered through into the living room, tea in one hand, files tucked under her other arm.
Twin couches sat on either side of the fireplace, their green leather looking a bit worn and shabby. A coffee table played host to a jar of markers and a carton of Post-its. The TV in the corner wasn’t one of those modern flatscreen jobs, so a technical antique. And last but not least, the reason the curtains were always shut in here: her murder board.
The one back at DHQ was big, but nothing compared to this. It covered all four walls, stretching from just above the skirting boards to as high as she could reach by standing on a dining-room chair. Photos and notes and memos, crime scenes and post-mortems, transcripts and reports — all of it copied from the Operation Maypole files. And OK, DI Tudor would probably have a fit if he found out she’d taken all this stuff home, but at least she was trying, right? Sifting through the evidence, searching for whatever it was that’d been overlooked these last seventeen months. The thing that would identify the Bloodsmith...
She’d annotated everything with Post-it notes. Lots and lots of Post-it notes. Extra sticky ones, in every colour you could buy. Each one of them covered in dense splodges of handwriting.
There’d been a brief dalliance with red ribbons, making a spider’s web between suspects and victims, like they did on TV and in the movies, but it was all a bit... melodramatic. That and it was a sod to move any piece without the whole thing unravelling. Ended up spending more time reweaving the red ribbon from point to point than analysing the evidence.
Victims took up the wall around the door, their ‘before’ photos in stark contrast to what the Bloodsmith had left behind — the crime-scene photos pinned up the wrong way around: images facing the wallpaper, so only their blank white backs were on show. Impact statements from their families were in the corner, each one treacly with remorse, and pain, and how loved the dead had been, even though most of them hadn’t seen the victim for months.
Suspects were on the wall opposite, the fireplace making a dark-brown mouth in the middle. They’d all been interviewed, and they’d all been cleared.
Transcripts took up most of the wall facing the big bay window, while a forest of Post-its clustered on both sides of the closed dusty curtains. Theories, questions, thoughts.
And none of it had helped one single sodding bit.
Lucy settled onto the couch. Her couch. Not the one Dad always used — with the pinhole burns in the leather from those revolting cigars of his — but the one he’d reserved for her not-particularly-frequent visits.
Right. Just because the suspects arranged either side of the fireplace had been officially marked as ‘no longer viable’, that didn’t mean she wasn’t looking at the Bloodsmith right now. Because she knew she was.
‘One of you bastards did it.’
Crunching her toast, sipping her tea.
The forensic psychologist’s profiles might be breathless unpunctuated rambles, but the conclusions in all five of the reports — one for each victim — were the same. The Bloodsmith was a man, in his late twenties to early forties, with a vehicle, a position of responsibility, and no significant affection in his life.
Of course, that didn’t mean he lived alone: he could be staying with an aged parent he had to care for, or trapped in a loveless marriage. Possibly because no decent human being could ever love a serial-killing piece of shit like him.
Which meant you couldn’t rule out anyone based on that.
But if they had to have a ‘position of responsibility’, that eliminated seven of the suspects, leaving nineteen to deal with. Not much of an improvement, but it was a start.
What about the ‘trying to establish an emotional connection by having a string of one-night stands’ angle? Who would women sleep with, out of this lot?
Suppose that would depend on how drunk he got them.
Maybe six you’d take home with you, if you were in the mood. Another three would be possibles after a bottle of white. Two more, if you’d had a couple of gins before that, providing they had a good sense of humour.
And not a single one of them looked like the man she’d chased. Nor did any of the ‘too ugly to shag’ crowd.
Lucy finished her toast, wiped the crumbs off her fingertips, then rearranged the photos, putting her six potential killers in a row. Relegating the wannabes to a pile on the coffee table, pinned down with the fist-sized lump of blue-and-purple geode she’d got in a dead friend’s will.