There wasn’t much left of the building: two storeys of crumbling masonry not much wider than a double garage; the roof half caved in; no glass in any of the windows, just rotting outlines where the frames used to be. Looked as if a strong sneeze would bring the whole thing down.
Wasn’t much of a clearing, either. The trees huddled close to the bulging stonework, three white-suited figures rustling about on their hands and knees as they picked through the loam.
Lucy signed into the crime scene, then leaned on the sagging wall by the door to pull on her booties. Stepped inside.
The cottage where Abby Geddes died might have been a dump, but it was the Ritz Carlton compared to this place. Most of the floor was gone, the walls hanging onto only the briefest scraps of mould-blackened plaster. Doors missing.
A little avalanche of cracked black slate spilled out from one of the downstairs rooms, and when she stuck her head in, drizzle drifted down through the gaping hole where the ceiling used to be. Leaving nothing but a two-storey void and a couple of crumbling joists between her and the ugly grey sky.
Yeah, sneezing definitely wasn’t a good idea.
The other downstairs room must’ve had a bare earth floor, because now it was a sea of rosebay willowherb — the flowers drooping and pale. Raw stone walls. At least the roof was still intact on this side. Scuffed footsteps rattled down from overhead.
That would be their crime scene, then.
A narrow set of rickety stairs led upwards, towards the noise.
‘Yeah, because that looks safe...’
Lucy picked her way up them to a small landing at the top with two doors leading off it. The one on the right was sealed off with a big X of yellow-and-black ‘CRIME SCENE’ tape, presumably to stop some idiot from walking through it and plummeting down onto the collapsed roof in the room below. The door on the other side opened with a haunted-house creak. Which was appropriate.
The unmistakeable, throat-clenching stench of rotting meat crawled out onto the landing.
‘OK...’
Inside, three people in the full SOC get-up were standing around what was left of the man on the floor. One was taking photographs with a huge digital camera, its flash bright enough to sear the room onto the back of Lucy’s skull. The other two had their heads together, the tall thin one having to bend down a fair bit to reach the short tubby one, voices little more than a murmur, as if they were worried about disturbing the dead.
And the body lying spreadeagled on the blackened floorboards was very, very dead.
Stripped naked and hollowed out. And going by what was left of his face, ears, toes, and fingers, the rats had been at him too.
Lucy huffed out a breath and turned her back on the remains.
There, on the wall beside the door she’d just come through, were the same two words they’d found with every dead body. ‘HELP ME!’ smeared in big, dark-brown, capital letters. So it was definitely their boy. The Bloodsmith. Nothing for five months, and now this.
‘Where have you been since April...?’
A sharp, posher-than-thou Morningside accent slashed through the foetid air. ‘And what, exactly, do you think you’re doing here? This is a sealed crime scene!’
11
Lucy paused for a breath, pulled on a fake smile, and turned. ‘Mrs Edwards.’ A small nod. Then did the same to the other, taller figure in the SOC suit. ‘DC Fraser said you wanted to see me, Boss?’ Not strictly true, but the new PF didn’t know that.
‘Did he?’ Tudor didn’t sound convinced by her misquoting the Dunk, but he shrugged and went with it anyway. ‘Oh. Right. Yes. I want you to put the crime-scene review on hold for now and get me everything you can on our victim.’ Pointing at the remains.
‘Yes, Boss. We got an ID?’
Mrs Edwards snorted behind her mask. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. Would DI Tudor need to ask you if he already knew who the victim was?’ Frumpy, fat, stuck-up bitch. She placed a hand on Tudor’s arm. ‘Now, is there anything else you need to discuss with this person, Alasdair, or can we get back to work?’
Oh, it was ‘Alasdair’ now, was it? Add ‘randy’, ‘hormonal’, and ‘deluded’ to the list.
He visibly cringed. ‘Sorry, Mrs Edwards. I need to go over an operational point with DS McVeigh.’
‘Please, Alasdair, it’s Kim to my friends.’ Swear to God, she actually simpered a bit.
‘Of course. Yes. “Kim”.’ Even covered from head to toe in PPE, Tudor looked creeped out. ‘I’ll just be a moment.’ Then he marched from the room and out onto the tiny landing, beckoning for Lucy to follow.
She squeezed out after him and shut the door behind her.
Soon as she did, Tudor sagged against the wall, gloved hands covering his facemask and goggles, voice a low muttering growl. ‘God, that woman is... challenging.’
‘Not the word I would’ve chosen, Boss.’
‘They couldn’t have assigned us a reasonable Procurator Fiscal, could they? Course they couldn’t.’ He sagged even further. ‘The Chief Super’s barely been off the phone since we got here. Not to mention Superintendent Spence and DCI Ross crawling out of the woodwork like... rats. They couldn’t wait to wash their hands of the whole thing yesterday, but now we’ve got a new body? Oh, now it’s all “appropriate oversight”, “high-level perspectives”, and “watching briefs”. Meanwhile muggins here will be neck-deep in the septic tank if it all goes wrong again.’
‘Have we got anything for me to go on? Does our victim have any distinguishing features? Possessions?’
‘You know, I had a “motivational” speech from Spence this morning that had me seriously thinking about going up to the castle and jumping.’
‘Anything that would help at all?’
Tudor’s head fell back to thunk against the old stonework. ‘Still, look on the bright side, at least we’ve got another body. Maybe the Bloodsmith will have cocked up somewhere this time and we’ll catch him?’
‘Boss!’
‘I know, I know.’ He raised a hand, then let it flop down again. ‘Can I not just enjoy one teensy little moan before I have to go back in there?’
She folded her arms, frowning at the closed door. ‘Nothing for five months, now this. Thought the Bloodsmith was supposed to be escalating? Six months between his first two victims, five between the second and the third, then four, then three, and we’re back to five again.’ She tilted her head on one side, picturing the remains. ‘Well, five minus however long he’s been lying in there.’
‘Maybe the Bloodsmith’s been out of town?’
‘Maybe. Or maybe he’s bright enough to know he was getting out of control and reined himself in for a while? Can serial killers do that? Maybe that’s why he’s gone back to killing them in the woods? He’s starting again.’
‘No idea. Want to take it up with our behavioural psychologist?’
The one with the long rambling sentences? No thanks.
‘Erm... I think it’ll be better coming from you, Boss — what with you being in sole charge and everything. It’ll carry more weight.’ Quick, change the subject before he tries to pass the buck back again. ‘I’ve been wondering about the fact we’ve been looking for a man this whole time. What if it’s not?’
Tudor frowned off into the distance for a while. ‘But the behavioural evidence analysis all says—’
‘Yes, but it doesn’t. It’s all “he” this and “him” that, but nowhere does it actually say that the Bloodsmith’s definitely one hundred percent male. I checked this morning.’