‘Attempted murder.’
‘Don’t care. Give it to Stan, or Emma. I’m busy.’
A long, disappointed sigh huffed out of the phone. ‘Very well. But don’t come crying to me if they get a conviction and take all the credit.’
‘Sarge?’ The Dunk sat up and poked her. Then pointed back towards the main road as the growl of multiple engines raced up Birrel Crescent. ‘We’re on.’
‘Got to go.’ She hung up.
A police van was in the lead, riot grille up, lights off, followed by two unmarked Vauxhalls and a couple of patrol cars.
The van put on one final burst of speed, mounting the kerb outside Dr Christianson’s house and slamming on the brakes — the side door flew open and four very large officers hammered out into the rain. They were dressed in the full Method-of-Entry kit: crash helmets; shin guards, kneepads, forearm protectors, and elbow pads; thick gloves; dirty big boots. Shoulders up, backs hunched as they charged along the garden path. The officer at the rear wielded the big red door key, and as her colleagues flattened out on either side of the front door, she smashed it in with a single blow of her tactical battering ram.
Lucy was out of the car, running across the road through the downpour, the Dunk bringing up the rear, hitting the opposite pavement as the Operational Support Unit swarmed in through the broken doorway.
Their voices boomed out from inside. ‘POLICE, EVERYONE STAY WHERE YOU ARE!’
‘NOBODY MOVE!’
‘POLICE!’
DI Tudor and DC Talladale clambered out of their Vauxhall, joining Lucy and the Dunk in Dr Christianson’s front garden.
Bangs and crashes. The occasional ‘CLEAR!’
Then silence.
Tudor shifted his feet, scuffing up the long grass. Not looking at Lucy. ‘We’re sure this is our guy?’ Sounding a lot less thrilled than he should’ve been, given they’d just IDed the Bloodsmith.
‘Well, I suppose it could be a massive coincidence, what with him harassing me, slashing my tyres, and every single victim being part of his loneliness study at ODU? Yeah, you know what, maybe it’s not him.’
The Dunk cleared his throat. ‘Well, not every single victim. Ex-DC Malcolm Louden wasn’t.’ He held up his hands as Lucy scowled at him. ‘But everyone else was!’
Tudor nodded. ‘OK. You two did good.’ Huffing out a breath. ‘Just have to hope this Dr Christianson is...’ He stared at the hole where the front door used to be, as one of the massive officers in MOE gear lumbered out into the rain again.
The officer raised her helmet’s visor. ‘No one home. Hasn’t been for a while.’
‘Sod.’ Tudor sagged, head in his hands.
‘You think that’s bad, wait till you see what we found in the garage.’
32
The faint glow of a rainy evening seeped in beneath the garage door, but other than that, the place was wreathed in darkness — the only strip light hung lifeless and littered with the ancient corpses of long-dead moths. But the harsh white circles of half a dozen police torches were focused on the contents of a large chest freezer.
Lucy stared.
Someone cleared their throat.
Someone else let out a long, hard sigh.
‘Wow.’ The Dunk fidgeted, his SOC suit rustling like a scrunched-up crisp packet.
It was easily big enough in here for Christianson’s Mini, or even the estate car parked outside, but instead there was a row of modular shelving, mounted to the garage wall, full of cardboard boxes and other household junk. A couple of bicycles. A lawnmower.
And the chest freezer.
Light glittered back from the dozens of glass jars, neatly stacked inside it, their surfaces beginning to fur with frost. Some were pot-of-jam sized, others big enough to have taken a hefty amount of pickles or sauerkraut, before they were repurposed to contain something a deep purple-scarlet colour. Next to them was a stack of plastic pouches — the kind they used when you donated blood. One of the Forensic team lifted a bag free from the pile. It was half filled and frozen solid, sparkling with a thin fur of ice crystals.
The SEB tech whistled. ‘He’s even put the names on them. See? This one’s Olive Hopkins.’
Their rambling forensic psychologist had got that bit right at least — Christianson had upgraded more than just his exsanguination method.
‘Jesus...’ DI Tudor pulled one of the smaller jars from the stack, turning it in his gloved hands till a white label appeared. ‘Bruce Malloch.’
Lucy backed away from the freezer and had a squint at the shelves instead. Some of the cardboard boxes had labels on them, too. She pulled out the one marked ‘JANE COOPER’. Blew the dust off. Opened it. A neatly folded blouse sat on top of a pile of other clothes. All of them stained with dark spatters of what had to be blood.
She moved onto the next one. ‘CRAIG THORBURN’. It contained a pair of jeans, trainers, and a ‘WOLFRABBIT WORLD TOUR 2004’ T-shirt covered in little dark-brown spots. There were four more marked boxes: ‘ADAM HOLMES’, ‘BRUCE MALLOCH’, ‘ABBY GEDDES’, and ‘OLIVE HOPKINS’, each one full of folded bloodstained clothes. It didn’t take long to rummage through the unmarked boxes, but they were full of random crap — old wedding presents, broken toasters, dusty crockery, and a fondue set. No sign of a large dark-red padded jacket. ‘Is it just me, or is anyone else wondering what happened to Malcolm Louden’s stuff?’
There was a pause, then Tudor clapped his gloved hands. ‘All right, everyone who isn’t a Forensic Services Scene Examination Resource: out. Those of you who are, I want this lot catalogued, fingerprinted, and every container of blood matched with a victim. Maybe our boy mixed and matched, or maybe DS McVeigh is right and Malcolm Louden is missing. Either way, we need to know what goes with who.’ Another clap of the hands. ‘Come on, move it, people, daylight’s wasting!’
The Dunk peeled off his SOC suit in the small Identification Bureau marquee, set up in Dr Christianson’s front garden — bridging the gap between the house’s front door and the outside world. The blue tarpaulin gave everything a sickly hue, shrouding them in gloom as rain thrummed against the marquee’s roof. He wodged up the crinkly white Tyvek and stuffed it into a black bin bag marked ‘CROSS-CONTAMINATION DISPOSAL’, followed by booties, facemask and gloves. Then stood there, waiting for Lucy to do the same. ‘Well, that’s been quite a day.’
Bit of an understatement.
She’d only got as far as unzipping her suit when Tudor appeared in the house doorway, still done up in the full SOC kit. Arms crossed. Voice hard and flat, muffled by the facemask. ‘DS McVeigh: with me. Now.’ Then he turned and disappeared back inside.
God’s sake, what had they done wrong this time?
The Dunk grimaced at her. ‘You want me to get the pool car warmed up, in case we have to make a quick getaway?’
She zipped her suit up again and scuffed into the house.
Tudor was in the kitchen, arms still folded, glowering at her through his safety goggles. ‘Close the door.’
Lucy did what she was told. ‘Is there a problem, Boss?’
The room was large enough for a small dining table at one end, the rest of it done up in country-farmhouse style, with patterned tiles on the splashback, pictures of sheep and cows on the walls, and over-elaborate cabinet doors. A knitted chicken-shaped cosy brooded over a basket of eggs that would be well past their sell-by date. Dust everywhere.