Squeezed behind the steering wheel, the DCI sits forward so her feet can reach the pedals. Eyes ahead. Jaw masticating gum. She drives as if she’s travelling at speed, even though the Land Rover can’t hold fifth.
A cigarette is propped upright in her fist. She blows smoke out of the far corner of her mouth. Speaks, giving me just the facts, the bare bones. Ray Hegarty retired from the force eight years ago and set up a security business - doing alarms, CCTV cameras, patrols and personal protection. He had offices in Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester.
He had a meeting in Glasgow on Monday afternoon and stayed overnight before driving to Manchester the next day. He was supposed to stop overnight and fly to Dublin on Wednesday morning for two days of meetings but the trip was cancelled. Instead he drove back to Bristol and had a late lunch with a business partner.
‘Bottom line - he wasn’t expected home until Friday - not according to his wife.’
‘Where was Helen?’
‘Working at St Martin’s Hospital in Bath. Her shift started at six.’
We pull up outside a house on the eastern edge of the village. Six uniforms stand guard, blocking off the street. Blue-and-white crime-scene tape has been threaded between two cherry trees and the front gate, twirling in the breeze like old birthday decorations. A large white SOCO van is parked in the driveway. Doors yawning. Metal boxes stacked inside.
Nearby, a forensic technician is crouching on the front path taking photographs. Dressed in blue plastic overalls, a hood and matching boot covers, he looks like an extra in a science-fiction movie.
Positioning a plastic evidence tag, he raises the camera to his eye. Shoots. Stands. When he turns I recognise him. Dr Louis Preston - a Home Office pathologist with a Brummie accent that makes him sound eternally miserable.
‘I hear they woke you, Ronnie.’
‘I’m a light sleeper,’ she replies.
‘Were you with anyone in particular?’
‘My hot-water bottle.’
‘Now there’s a waste.’ The pathologist glances at me and nods. ‘Professor, long time no see.’
‘I would have waited.’
‘I get that a lot.’
Preston is famous for terrorising his pathology students. According to one apocryphal story, he once told a group of trainees that two things were required to conduct an autopsy. The first was no sense of fear. At this point he stuck his finger into a dead man’s anus, pulled it out and sniffed it. Then he invited each student to follow his lead and they all complied.
‘The second thing you need is an acute sense of observation,’ he told them. ‘How many of you noticed that I stuck my middle finger into this man’s anus, but sniffed my index finger?’
Urban myth? Compelling hearsay? Both probably. Anybody who slices open dead people for a living has to maintain a sense of humour. Either that or you go mad.
Turning back to the van, he collects a tripod.
‘I never thought I’d see Ray Hegarty like this. I thought he was bloody indestructible.’
‘You were friends?’
Preston shrugs. ‘Wouldn’t go that far. Mutual respect.’
‘How did he die?’
‘Somebody hit him from behind and then severed his carotid artery.’ The pathologist runs a finger across his throat. ‘You’re looking for something like a razor or a Stanley knife. It’s not in the bedroom.’
Cray helps him move a silver case. ‘When can we come inside?’
‘Find some overalls. Stay on the duck boards and don’t touch anything.’
The two-storey semi has wisteria twisting and climbing across the front façade. No longer in leaf, the grey trunk looks gnarled and ancient, slowly strangling the building. There are stacks of old roofing tiles beside the garage doors.
Two things stand out about the house. It’s the sort of place that should have had a long sweeping drive - all the proportions suggest it. Secondly, it’s partially hidden from the road by a high wall covered in ivy. Tall trees are visible beyond the slate roof and chimneys. The curtains downstairs are open. Anyone approaching would have seen the lights on.
‘Was the door locked or unlocked?’
‘Open,’ says Cray. ‘Sienna ran. She didn’t bother pulling it closed.’
Stepping on to the first of a dozen duckboards, I follow her through the front door and along a passage.
‘Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.’
Cray looks at me. ‘Who wrote that?’
‘Oscar Wilde.’
‘Some of those Micks could write.’
Orange fluorescent evidence markers are spaced intermittently on the stairs, distinguishing blood spots. A camera flashes upstairs, sending a pulse of light through the railings.
I turn and study the front door. No burglar alarm. Basic locks. For a security consultant, Ray Hegarty didn’t take many personal precautions.
‘Who lives next door?’
‘An old bloke, a widower.’
‘Did he hear anything?’
‘I don’t think he’s heard anything since the Coronation.’
‘Any sign of forced entry?’
‘No.’
‘Who had keys?’
‘Just the family members. There’s the other daughter, Zoe. She’s at university in Leeds. She’s driving down now with her boyfriend. And there’s Lance, who’s twenty-two. He works for a motorcycle mechanic in Bristol. Rents his own place.’
The sitting room and dining room are tastefully furnished. Neat. Clean. There are so many things that could be disturbed - plants in pots, photographs in frames, books on shelves, cushions on the sofas - but everything seems in place.
The kitchen is tidy. A single plate rests in the sink, with a cutting board covered in breadcrumbs. Helen made a sandwich for lunch or a snack to take to work. She left a note on the fridge for Sienna telling her to microwave a lasagne for dinner.
Through the kitchen there is an extension that was probably a sunroom until it was turned into a bedroom. Refitted after Zoe’s attack, it has a single bed, a desk, closet and chintz curtains, as well as a ramp leading down to the garden. The en suite bathroom has a large shower and handrails. On the dresser there is a picture of Zoe playing netball, balanced on one leg as she passes the ball.
Walking back along the hallway, I notice the door beneath the stairs is ajar. Easing it open with my shoe, I see an overnight bag on the floor. Ray Hegarty’s overcoat hangs on a wooden peg. He came home, hung up his coat and tossed down his bag. Then what?
Something drew him upstairs. A sound. A voice.
Cray goes ahead of me, stepping over evidence markers as she climbs each step without touching the banister. The main bedroom is straight ahead. Two doors on the left lead to a bathroom and second bedroom. Sienna’s room is off to the right. Ray Hegarty lies face down on a rug beside her bed with his arms outstretched, head to one side, eyes open. Blood has soaked through the rug and run along cracks in the floorboards. His business shirt is stained by bloody handprints. Small hands.
Sienna’s room is a mess with her clothes spilling from drawers and draped over the end of her bed, which is unmade. Her duvet is bunched against the wall and a hair-straightening iron peeks from beneath her pillow.
I notice a shoebox, which has been customised with photographs clipped from magazines. Someone has pulled it from beneath the bed and opened the lid to reveal a collection of bandages, plasters, needles and thread. It is Sienna’s cutting box and also her sewing kit.
The untidiness of the room could be teenage-induced. I have one of those at home - messy, sullen and self-absorbed - but this looks more like a quick ransacking. A search.
‘Is anything missing?’ I ask.
Cray answers. ‘Nothing obvious. We won’t know until we interview the family.’
‘Where’s Helen?’
‘At the hospital with Sienna.’
Crouching beside the body, I notice blood splatters, some large and others barely visible, sprayed as high as the ceiling. A hockey stick lies near his right hand. Lacquered to a shine, it has a towelling grip in school colours.
I squat motionless in the centre of the room, trying to get a sense of the events. Ray Hegarty was hit from behind and fell forward. There are no signs of a struggle, no defence wounds or bruises or broken furniture.
Turning my head, I notice an oval-shaped mirror on a stand, which is reflecting a white square of light on to the bed, highlighting the small blue flowers stitched into the sheets.
I look at myself reflected in the mirror and can also see the door behind me. Stepping over the body, I partially close the door and stand behind it. Glancing towards the mirror, I can see Cray reflected in the open doorway.
Her eyes meet mine.
‘What is it?’
‘This is where they stood. The mirror told them when Ray Hegarty was in the doorway.’
‘But there’s hardly any room.’
‘The door was half-closed.’
‘Someone small.’
‘Maybe.’
Almost immediately I remember Sienna’s face bleached by the beam of the torch. There was something in her eyes . . . a terrible knowledge.
Louis Preston emerges from the bathroom, looking like a surgeon preparing to operate.
‘There are traces of blood in the S-bend of the sink.’
‘Somebody cleaned up.’
‘Forensic awareness is such an important life skill,’ says Preston. ‘I blame it on American cop shows. They’re like “how-to” guides. How to clean up a crime scene, how to dispose of the weapon, how to get away with murder . . .’
Cray winks at me. ‘What’s wrong, Preston, did some smart defence lawyer punch a pretty little hole in your procedures?’
‘I got no beef with defence lawyers. Some of my best friends are bottom feeders. It’s the juries I can’t abide. Unless they see fingerprints, fibres, or DNA, they’ll never convict. They want the proverbial smoking gun, but sometimes there aren’t any forensic clues. The scene is cleaned up or washed by rain or contaminated by third parties. We’re scientists, not magicians.’
Preston scratches his nose and looks at his index finger as though he finds it fascinating.
Meanwhile, I wander across the landing to the bathroom. A wicker laundry basket is tucked beneath the sink. The toilet seat is down. The shelves above the sink are neatly arranged with toothpaste, toothbrushes (three of them), liquid soap and mouthwash. The hand-towel beside the sink is neatly folded and hung over the railing.
‘They tidied the place,’ I say out loud.
Cray appears behind me.
‘Make any sense?’
‘Not much.’
‘Did Ray Hegarty make many enemies in the job?’
‘We all make enemies.’
It’s not an answer.
‘Any skeletons?’
Her voice hardens. ‘He was a good copper. Straight.’
A different SOCO appears at the base of the stairs. Calls to Preston. ‘I found a stash of porn in the shed. You want me to bag it?’
‘What sort of porn?’ asks the pathologist.
‘Magazines, DVDs ...’
‘Anything unusual?’
‘Like what?’
‘Rape scenes, violent fantasies, anything involving children.’
Cray stiffens in protest. Already she wants to safeguard Ray Hegarty’s reputation. A murder investigation is a circus of possibilities, where the spotlight is so fierce it reveals every blemish and flaw. The victim is also placed on trial and sometimes they die all over again in the courtroom - portrayed as being somehow responsible and slandered as viciously as they were stabbed or strangled or shot.
Cray won’t let that happen. Not this time. Not to her friend.
Outside, the crowd has thinned out. A few remaining teenagers are loitering on the far side of the lane, kicking aimlessly at dead leaves. A young man swigs from a lurid can. His dark hair has blond streaks cut in a ragged curtain that doesn’t so much frame his face as provide him somewhere to hide.
My eyes rush to judgement. He looks familiar. Maybe it’s a sign that I’ve seen too much of the world and now it is starting to repeat itself.
Then I remember where I’ve seen him. Sienna Hegarty kissed his cheek and climbed into his car. The youth is still staring at me. A fringe of hair is flicked from his eyes. He turns away and begins walking quickly.
I yell out to him and he runs, jinking between bystanders and parked cars.
Cray is still inside with Preston. I yell to the uniforms guarding the gate but none of them reacts quickly enough to stop him. The kid is forty yards ahead. Whippet thin, underfed, built for speed. I lose sight of him as he passes under the arch of the old railway viaduct. By the time I reach the same corner he’s disappeared completely.
I notice a farm track on the left. It’s the only possibility. Turning up the twin ruts, I keep running, feeling a weight hang around my heart and lungs. Walking hasn’t made me any fitter.
Ahead, a car engine starts, rumbling through a broken muffler. The Peugeot accelerates out of a muddy farmyard, the back tyres snaking in the slick puddles. He’s not slowing down. I’m caught on the grassy ridge between the twin tracks with hedges on either side.
I raise my hand. He doesn’t stop. At the last moment I throw myself to one side, curling my legs away from the spinning wheels.
Lying on my back, I take a deep breath and gaze at a bank of moving clouds, listening to my heart thudding.
‘Are you all right?’ asks a voice in a slow West Country drawl. It’s Alasdair Riordan, the farmer I saw earlier.
‘I’m fine.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Resting.’
He nods, satisfied, and turns back to his tractor.
‘Did you see that car?’ I ask.
Alasdair pulls off his woollen hat and scratches an itch on his scalp. ‘Aye, I did.’
‘It almost ran me down.’
‘Aye.’
‘You didn’t happen to get the number?’
He replaces his hat and shakes his head. ‘I’m not too good with numbers.’
A moment later two uniforms appear. Ronnie Cray is behind them, sweating profusely.
‘You all right?’
‘Fine.’
‘Who was in the car?’
‘Sienna’s boyfriend.’
She registers the information like a fevered prospector. ‘You should have left it to us.’
‘He ran. I chased.’
‘What are you - a dog?’ She looks at her muddy shoes. ‘I hope that kid knows how to polish.’
My mobile is vibrating.
‘What happened to Sienna?’ blurts Charlie, close to tears.
‘She’s in hospital.’
‘Is she OK?’
‘She’s in shock, but I think she’ll be fine.’
I can hear playground noises in the background.
‘They’re saying that Mr Hegarty is dead. They’re saying that Sienna killed him.’
‘We don’t know what happened.’
‘But he’s dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I go and see Sienna?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Can I call her?’
‘No.’
She sniffles and blows her nose. Charlie rarely cries. She bottles things up. Holds them inside. Ever since the kidnapping, I have watched her closely, anticipating problems. Is she eating and sleeping properly? Is she socialising normally? Sometimes I dare to hope the worst is over, but then the nightmares will return and she cries out, clawing the air, snatching at unseen things in the darkness. Stumbling to her room, I kneel beside her bed, stroking her forehead and talking softly. Her eyes will open, looking vacuously into space as though a terrible revelation about life has been whispered in her ear.
This was my fault, my doing, and I would flay the skin from my back if I could rewind the clock and protect her next time. I don’t want to assuage the guilt. I want to change her memories.