171695.fb2 Blood Moon - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 31

Blood Moon - читать онлайн бесплатно полную версию книги . Страница 31

31

Ellen Destry should have been at the end-of-day briefing, but she was breaking into Adrian Wishart’s house. A familiar roaring set up in her ears. It had nothing to do with the noises she made, for she was whisper quiet, but with the heightened flow of her blood. With excitement, apprehension and a sense of entitlement, in other words.

Now she stood perfectly still in Adrian Wishart’s sitting room until her blood eased and she could hear the external world again.

Nothing.

She was alone.

No sirens, next-door voices or unexpected occupants to undo her.

She flexed her hands in their latex gloves and began to move. This was not the first time she’d broken into someone’s house and it wouldn’t be the last. It was part of her secret life. It was also part of her detecting life. She didn’t know if other police officers did it or not. Some surely did, but did not admit it. Perhaps Challis did it, too, but if he were like her he’d never admit it.

Ellen moved swiftly through the house, checking for unwelcome surprises or obstacles, mapping the layout of each room and locating the escape routes. Then she went through again, identifying areas of interest for a more concentrated sweep. She didn’t know what she expected to discover about Adrian Wishart, only that she’d formed a loathing for him and expected to find something that proved his role in the murder of his wife-a phone number, photographs or other evidence of a lover or a hired killer. The house had been formally searched already, but only to learn if there were hidden aspects of Ludmilla’s life. Her computer had been removed. Correspondence. Financial papers. The warrant hadn’t extended to the husband, not without hard evidence.

She felt alive when she made these covert forays into other people’s private worlds. The sense of elation was never far away. She was powerful at these times. Victorious. She had a hold over Adrian Wishart today and he didn’t know it.

Not that she’d be able to use anything she discovered, or not in any formal or legal sense. The search was illegal and anything she found would be ruled inadmissible by a judge. But she might find something that guided the direction of the investigation.

As she moved from room to room, Ellen tried to see the furnishings and decorations as if she were Ludmilla Wishart making a home, a nest, and failed. It wasn’t a failure of the imagination; rather, it seemed to Ellen as if Ludmilla had played only a small role in designing and decorating the house. It was as if she’d been negated or sidelined by her husband. Ellen didn’t believe that women were necessarily fussy and decorative, and men harsh and utilitarian, but she was convinced that Adrian Wishart was responsible for the almost mathematical precision with which the rooms, furniture and paintings had been arranged, and she itched to soften the effect. If she lived here she’d be afraid to bump a chair out of alignment, smudge a glass surface, leave a crumb behind or shed a cotton thread. Order and control ruled this house. Unchallengeable principles governed it.

Ellen began her fine-detail search in the bathroom. First she took digital photographs of the contents of the cabinets, then examined labels and shook bottles and tubes, before replacing everything exactly where it had been, according to the images stored in her camera. Ludmilla had been prescribed a birth-control pill, Adrian an anti-inflammatory.

She repeated her search technique in the other rooms, hunting through all the obvious places: hollow cavities behind skirting boards, under the cistern lid in the en-suite bathroom, behind paintings, inside freezer and pantry containers. No drugs, and only a little alcohol. No pornography, no sex aids, no secret stash of love letters.

Then, tucked under bills, junk mail and what were probably unopened birthday cards in a bowl on a hallstand, Ellen found an envelope containing $250 in cash. With it was an invoice in the sum of $250 made out to Ludmilla Wishart by Grant’s Gardening, the words ‘cash payment appreciated’ at the bottom. Ellen pocketed the envelope and its contents without thinking and moved on to Adrian Wishart’s studio, the only room she’d not yet searched.

She checked the time: 5 p.m. She’d be late to Hal’s briefing, and Wishart might be back at any time. She’d seen him leave, confirming Scobie’s report that the uncle was expecting him, but what if Wishart changed his mind about the drive to the city? She picked over the files, desk diary and drawers desultorily, made a quick search of the man’s laptop, and rummaged through the scraps in his wastepaper bin. On the surface, his life was clinical and hardhearted. She needed to find where that would tip over into committing murder.

A car passed by the house. Ellen darted to the window and saw a taxi winding its way along the street and out of sight. As a reflex, she grabbed the curtain edge and heard the rings rattle on the rod above her head. She looked up. A hollow metal rod, with decorative knobs on each end. Quite a thick rod. Roomy. She remembered her favourite lover’s-revenge story about breaking into the cheating boyfriend’s home and stuffing his curtain rod with rotting fish. Taken him days, weeks, to isolate the source of the awful smell.

Ellen dragged a chair over. One of the decorative ends was dusty. She unscrewed the clean one and there, nestling inside it, was a USB memory stick.

****