BLOOD STAINED an unputdownable crime thriller with a breathtaking twist (Detective Claudia Nunn Book 1)

by Rebecca Bradley

  ‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ Dominic said. ‘What have you missed out, boss?’

  Kapoor let out a sigh. ‘The violence, Dom. I’ve left out the bloody violence.’ He rubbed his face with his hands. ‘Do you ever feel as though you’re too old for this job?’

  Dominic thought about it. He was fifty-two and only had a few years left in the job; he could retire when he was fifty-five at the earliest or hold on until he was sixty. The fact that he could leave in three years seemed surreal; he didn’t feel old enough. ‘No, I don’t feel old at all, boss.’ He smiled.

  Kapoor scratched at his cheek with the pen that was in his hand. ‘Maybe it’s sitting in this office that’s aging me. Or maybe it’s having a wife who is over ten years younger than you that keeps you young, Dom.’

  Dom laughed. ‘To be fair, Ruth tires me out. She has so much more energy than I do. A decade is a lot when it comes to aging. We don’t feel the difference when we’re sitting together talking, but when it comes to physical activities like bike riding and fell walks, then I notice. I’m glad she’s over forty now. It means she’s slowing down a little more herself, but she’s definitely been hard work to keep up with.’

  Kapoor tapped the sheet of paper in front of him. ‘This is the incident report. It doesn’t make for pleasant reading.’ He picked it up and handed it to Dominic. ‘Get yourself over there and get control of the scene. I’ve instructed uniform to keep a wide cordon, we want to preserve as much evidence as is possible. CSU are travelling. We want to keep this as quiet as we can for now until we know what we’re dealing with. No press involvement. I don’t want to scare the public. We need to be able to control the narrative, not have it running away with us, so keep your circle tight and remind uniform to do the same, will you?’

  Dominic was reminded again of how the boss always had to think of the wider picture and not just the crime scene. He’d taken his inspectors exams in the past but hadn’t got the required mark. He was happy as a DS though. He could get his feet dirty and still have some supervisory power. He had his own little team within the unit.

  He rose from his chair.

  ‘Keep me updated, Dom.’ Kapoor looked up at him. ‘And keep it contained.’

  Dominic took the report off Kapoor. ‘Yes, boss.’

  With the incident report in his hand he left the office and started to read down the sheet. It was exactly as Kapoor had stated. The dog walker sounded pretty distressed on the original call. He read the text.

  Caller states he was walking his dog in Ecclesall Woods when he stumbled and fell. He couldn’t help but fall onto her, he said. His hands dropped straight onto her body as he put them down to lessen his fall. He was pretty incoherent but he fell into a woman’s body and he says she is dead. He got off her as quickly as he could and has not touched her since. He knows she is a crime scene and that he has contaminated the scene and will wait for police to attend. He has blood on his clothes and has had to put his dog on the lead to prevent him from nosing around the woman.

  Dominic would need to bring the walker back to the station so he could be forensically examined and have his clothes seized from him. He walked back into the incident room and grabbed his team. They had worked together for the past four years since DC Paul Teague had joined them.

  ‘This is a dark one,’ he said to them as they grabbed their radios and car keys. ‘Make a quick phone call home if you need to, let your loved ones know you’re going to be late.’ They were due to be on rest days the day after next, but now this job had come in there was no way they would be having any days off. It regularly happened like this.

  He sent a quick text to Ruth explaining a body had been found and they were being sent out to it. She said she’d leave him some food in the microwave in case he didn’t manage to eat at work. She wouldn’t be annoyed if he grabbed a bite on the job. She knew what it was like. Sometimes they had the opportunity and other times they were run off their feet and there was no chance. Not that he cared if she was annoyed or not. The job was more important than anything else for him right now. This was where his focus was.

  He spun his car keys up in the air and caught them as they came down. ‘Let’s go and see what we have out there,’ he said.

  Chapter 5

  Claudia

  Ten hours since Ruth’s attack

  Claudia interlocked her fingers on the table. ‘Okay. Look, I’m going to go out and do the search of your house myself, I—’

  ‘Why? What have I said that has made you decide you need a look?’ Harrison was practically leaning across the table.

  Claudia kept her poise. ‘As I was saying—’ she eyed him straight on and he backed off a little — ‘I think I owe it to you to do a proper job on this and that means doing every step myself and not fobbing the premises search off onto uniform officers. Yes, I’ll take them with me but I want to have a look around. That way I’ll also have more of a feel for things as we talk.’

  Harrison pursed his lips.

  Claudia ignored the look he had given her and ploughed on. ‘You going to be okay here if I disappear for a short while?’

  ‘What else am I going to do? I might go a little stir crazy, but as long as I know people are looking for her then I can wait.’

  Claudia stood. ‘I’d better go, before the sergeant I gave your key to disappears off to your house. And yes, people are looking for her. What do you imagine her team are doing right about now? You think they’re twiddling their thumbs? Or continuing with the case as usual? No, they’ll have split resources and they’ll be focusing on Ruth.’

  Harrison looked at her. ‘What about my team? What happens to that job?’

  Claudia was at the door. ‘You’re seriously still worrying about that case in the light of what’s happening?’

  ‘I am. Because he’s responsible for what’s happened to Ruth. Why aren’t you listening? We’re so close to catching him that he’s decided to strike back.’

  Claudia pursed her lips. ‘There are still plenty of officers working on it and we’ll consider your thoughts as we progress today. Let’s see how things go.’ And with that she was out the door leaving Harrison sitting at the table, in the room, with the too-high window, all alone.

  It took Claudia about twenty minutes to drive to Dominic’s home address at Green Lane, Wharncliffe Side, with the uniform officers. She had been many times before but it made her skin crawl to be there with cops to search the place for signs of wrongdoing in relation to Ruth and what may have happened to her. Claudia desperately hoped that she was safe and well. That she had walked away for some time out, even though she knew better than to go without leaving word of where she was going. Even if she had walked out on Dominic and didn’t want to contact him, Ruth knew to let someone know where she was. Claudia would probably be that someone. Right now though, Ruth going walkabout would be better than the alternative.

  Claudia thought once again of what was on Ruth’s mind that last night she saw her. Could it have driven her away or caused her to come to some mortal harm? And if she was at the mercy of another, why hadn’t she confided in Claudia if she was in trouble? Claudia wondered if it really had been job related. Maybe that was the reason for her distraction.

  One of the cops carried a search bag in. He dumped it in the entrance hall and Claudia bent down and pulled out a pair of small gloves, snapping them onto her hands. They had to be careful in case they found something and needed to call a forensic team in.

  She walked into the neat and welcoming living room, a room she was familiar with. There was no sign of a problem. Nothing looked out of place. All the cushions were positioned where they were supposed to be on the sofa. Prints and family photographs hung on the wall. Ruth smiling down at her, carefree and happy. A knot of worry caught in her chest. Come on Ruth, where are you? Give us a clue as to where you’ve gone, what has happened?

  ‘I’ll go upstairs,’ said one of the uniform cops.

  ‘Okay, I’ll go c
heck out the kitchen and utility room,’ Claudia replied as she made her way through the door into the kitchen.

  There was a dirty mug on the kitchen worktop. Everything else was away. Nothing seemed out of place here. She pushed the foot peddle on the kitchen bin and peered in. The container was filled with the usual kitchen rubbish. Food leftovers and non-recyclable containers. She was about to let the lid drop when something glinted. With a gloved finger she moved a piece of kitchen roll and found shards of broken glass. Yes, glassware was easily broken in homes, but what were the odds of her finding a broken glass in the kitchen the day after Ruth went missing? She would need to get a CSI team out to examine it.

  ‘Don’t anyone touch that bin,’ she said to the cop entering the kitchen.

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Anything out of place anywhere else?’ she asked.

  ‘Not as far as we can tell, but it’s a tidy home so if there was a struggle you’d think it would be easy to identify.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She agreed. Plus wouldn’t Dominic have mentioned it?

  She pushed on the door to the utility room where the washing machine and dryer were housed.

  ‘What’s through there?’ asked the cop, eyeing up the closed door at the other side of the room.

  ‘It leads to the garage. An internal way in.’ Claudia flicked on a light switch as they walked through the utility room, pausing to check the washer for clothing that might be being dumped in it following an attack of some sort, but it was empty. As she’d known it would be. Then she pushed open the door to the garage. It was heavier set than the rest of the doors in the house. ‘He doesn’t keep his car in here, he parks on the drive like most people. I think it’s filled with junk.’

  She turned and stepped into the garage. A strip light fitted on the ceiling glowed down into the space. There were shelves on the walls filled with small and large boxes and other bits of stuff she could only describe as junk.

  The cop who had walked into the kitchen was standing behind her. She stepped into the garage and walked further in. There was something on the floor towards the front. It looked like an oil spill, sleek and glossy. But she’d said to the cop behind her that Dominic didn’t keep the car in here, and looking at the boxes along the walls it didn’t seem as though he could drive the car in here to work on it either, there was not enough room. Maybe a canister behind one of the boxes had been knocked over and spilled.

  She took a couple of steps closer. Her nose twitched.

  That was not the smell of oil. Her stomach roiled.

  She turned to the cop behind her. ‘Get the CSU here.’

  ‘What do we have?’ he asked.

  She took another step forward. ‘There’s a broken . . . a smashed . . .’ She stumbled over her words as she focused on the ground in front of her. ‘There’s broken glass in the pedal bin in the kitchen that needs examining.’ She struggled to believe what was in front of her.

  She could see it now. She could see the colour of it closer to the edge of the puddle where the fluid was thinner. It was definitely not oil. It was not black.

  It was red. Deep slick red.

  ‘And I think we have a large patch of blood here in the garage.’ She concluded as calmly as she could manage, though as her own blood rushed through her veins she was anything other than calm.

  He peered around her. ‘Jesus.’

  Claudia reached out a hand towards the wall to the side of her, grasping for something to hold on to, clawing, needing something solid to hold her up. The understanding of what this meant for her friend sinking in. But the wall stayed where it was, solid, silent and elusive. Out of reach. Claudia bent over and put her hands on her knees. The blood swimming in front of her as her vision greyed out. An internal thermometer jacked up her heating system and a far-off bell started to ring in her ears.

  ‘Can someone live with this much blood missing?’ Claudia’s colleague asked as she tried to stay upright.

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. You only have eight pints of blood in your body. I’m not sure how many you can live without before you die.’ There was a hell of a lot of blood on the floor in front of her. If this was Ruth’s, she was missing a lot, and Claudia was sure as hell Ruth needed it.

  ‘Well, whoever’s this is, they’re not going to be doing so well.’

  Claudia turned and snapped at him, the bells fading out, her vision clicking back into place. ‘Have you contacted the CSU yet?! It’s all well and good standing around here chatting about it but we won’t know anything until we get the professionals here. So stop trying to guess and get a move on.’

  ‘Oh, erm, yes, ma’am.’ He flustered then grabbed for the radio on his shoulder and called up the control room to request the crime scene unit.

  Claudia turned on her heel and stalked out of the garage. ‘No one comes in or out of here. It’s for CSU only,’ she said to him as she passed.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He moved towards the door and away from the pool of blood that was glistening under the strip light.

  Claudia walked through the house to the search bag that had been left near the front door, pulled out two plastic bags and climbed the stairs. Walking into the main bedroom, she searched until she found a hairbrush with long strands of hair trapped within the teeth. She pushed it into one of the bags and sealed it before writing on the exhibit label stamped on the outside of the bag, signing it with the date and time. Then she went into the bathroom, selected the pink toothbrush and bagged that up also, signing and sealing it. The CSIs would now have something to compare the DNA of the blood against when they got back to the lab. They would be able to tell if the pool of blood was indeed Ruth Harrison’s or not.

  Chapter 6

  Claudia

  Claudia decided she would climb the stairs to Sharpe’s office rather than the easier option of taking the lift. She needed something to take this pent-up energy out of her before she spoke to the DCI. It was as though there was electricity running through her veins and she didn’t know what to do with herself. Surely Sharpe would take her off this case. She couldn’t keep her on it. She had texted Sharpe her findings so she had a heads-up as to what this conversation was to be about. Time enough to run it up the flagpole. Surely no one in their right mind would keep Claudia on this investigation now.

  At the top of the stairs Claudia assessed herself. Her jaw was clenched and her heart was thudding hard in her chest. Walking up those few steps had not helped her in the least. She was most definitely not the best person to continue.

  ‘Is she in?’ Claudia asked Maxine, Sharpe’s PA.

  Maxine looked up from her computer, curls pulled back from her face, a few strands coming loose and tumbling down to her shoulders. ‘She’s in. She said to send you straight through as soon as you arrived.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She didn’t have much capacity for small talk today.

  She pushed open Sharpe’s door to find her standing behind her desk with her landline phone to her ear. Finely polished fingernails twirled between the curls of the cord separating the phone and earpiece. With her free hand she waved Claudia in.

  Claudia let out a breath, closed the door behind her and waited for Sharpe to finish her call.

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. Yes, I know. Yes, of course. We’re on it. Yes. Yes.’ A deep sigh escaped Sharpe’s lips and she rolled her eyes at Claudia. ‘She’s one of ours, of course we’re pulling out all the stops. Yes, I’ll get in touch as soon as I know anything.’ She put the phone down with a crash.

  ‘Bloody civilians,’ she muttered.

  Claudia raised her eyebrows.

  ‘The police and crime commissioner. Doesn’t think it looks good that one of our own has been abducted, potentially fatally injured. Thinks it will scare the public. We need to deal with it as quickly as possible.’ Sharpe stopped talking. ‘I’m sorry you were the one who had to find the crime scene, Claudia. How are you? And what a bloody idiot leaving it there for us.’

  ‘I’m fine, ma’am.�
� She was far from fine. She wanted to be as far away from this job as she could get.

  Sharpe pulled her chair back from her desk. ‘Grab a seat, Claudia. Grab a seat. Don’t stand there looking untidy.’ Sharpe sat in her own chair and Claudia in the one opposite.

  ‘So, you have to arrest Harrison then.’ Sharpe picked up a mug and drank from it.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Claudia snapped back up to standing.

  ‘Oh, do sit down, Claudia. Let’s talk about this. We don’t need hysterics.’

  ‘Hysterics?’ Claudia turned her back to Sharpe. Was she being hysterical by not wanting to carry on with this case? She didn’t understand why she was even involved.

  ‘Okay, I might have been a little harsh.’ Sharpe’s voice softened. ‘But please, do sit.’

  Claudia was caught off guard; Sharpe wasn’t known for backing down. She slipped back into the chair and stared at her boss. ‘Why do you want me to make the arrest and carry on with the case?’ she asked.

  ‘When I got your message I took it up with Connelly and between us we think, as you’ve already started the process with Harrison, it would serve to have you continue. He’ll know what you’ve found and he’ll not expect you to be the one to go in and make the arrest and to interview him from here on in. We can use this to our advantage. To knock him off his comfortable perch. The more unsettled we keep him the better. He won’t be able to keep himself together and whatever plan he has in play, we can scupper and find Ruth sooner rather than later.’ She looked at Claudia. ‘Whatever state she may be in.’

  Claudia understood where her boss was coming from but she didn’t like it. Sharpe was making an assumption that Harrison was guilty of a crime before they had any evidence. Evidence was the cornerstone of a police investigation and evidence was the only way Claudia could even begin to get her head around the whole scenario. Today had her spinning. How was she supposed to hold herself together while Ruth was missing and Dominic was their immediate suspect? Sending Claudia in to interview him now the blood had been found wasn’t playing by the rules. Though there was nothing actually written down that said she couldn’t do this. And he was going to be arrested, because yes, there certainly was enough to make an arrest, with the blood having been found at his home, just not enough to jump to the conclusion he was guilty — he was, after all, still one of their own.