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

by Rebecca Bradley

  Jonathan was bent over, hands on his knees. ‘Yes, yes. I’m fine.’ He straightened himself up. ‘I’m sorry. It hit me as soon as you pushed the key in that she wouldn’t be doing this again.’ Helen again soothed him by holding onto his arm. It was probably as much for her own comfort as it was for his.

  ‘We can leave it to the search team if you’d like?’ Dominic said, though the reality was he didn’t want to. He desperately wanted this couple to go through the house. They might be able to help. They might offer some insight that they might not otherwise get. But it had to be on their terms.

  ‘I’m good, let’s go.’

  Dominic wanted him to be okay with this. ‘You’re sure?’

  Jonathan took a deep breath. ‘Yes. This is for Julie.’ A tear slid down his face but Dominic could live with a tear, if it was going to get him a line of enquiry. They had to move forward and do it before the search team arrived at the premises.

  He turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.

  It was dark inside. As it was outside. And there was a chill to the property. That chill that told you no one had lived there for a week or more. That feeling when you’ve been away on holiday and return.

  ‘Oh Julie,’ Jonathan stammered behind him.

  They had walked into the kitchen. On the sink drainer was an upside-down glass. Long dry. On the kitchen sides were clean bowls not yet put away. Left for another time. A time that would no longer come.

  ‘Notice anything out of place, or anything you don’t recognise in here?’ Dominic asked.

  Jonathan shook his head. His face pale in the shadow of the Tyvek hood.

  On the side of the fridge was a list, stuck with a magnetic red blob.

  Tomatoes.

  Bread.

  Onions.

  Tampax.

  Oranges.

  To the side of that was another piece of paper, ragged, torn from a bigger sheet. Taxi and a number.

  Below another scruffy piece of her life jotted down and magnetised to the fridge. Keeping her life in order one jotted-down note at a time. Christian 30 Sept.

  Four days ago.

  ‘Who’s Christian?’ Dominic asked.

  Jonathan stared at the side of the fridge. Lost in a memory of his sister.

  ‘Jonathan,’ Dominic prompted.

  Jonathan shook himself. ‘I think that was the name of the guy from the website she was seeing. I can’t be sure. She didn’t say a lot about him. She was very coy about it. Her love life left a lot to be desired. After her marriage broke down she thought she would never find love again and the dating sites confirmed that for her, so she kept most of it to herself. Said she’d tell us more when she was sure she had something to tell us. Said she was too old to be doing this. She wasn’t some little kid who was easily swayed by a pretty boy picture, this was all too hard for her.’

  ‘Why do it then?’ Dominic asked.

  Jonathan stared at him for a long time. ‘Because she needed someone in her life. Have you never had that feeling? Where you feel so alone, no matter who you are with?’

  He kept quiet. It wasn’t the time to talk.

  ‘Christian,’ Jonathan continued, ‘was the guy, I think.’ He looked to Helen for confirmation.

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know, love. I really don’t. It could be. All I saw was a photo.’

  Dominic rounded on her. ‘You saw a photograph of him?’

  She took a step back. Her grip on Jonathan released.

  Hayley stared at him. Her eyes telling him he had gone too far.

  He lowered his voice. ‘When did you see a photo?’

  Helen looked to the floor. ‘Before she went missing. She was at our house and Jonathan was upstairs in the shower. She whispered that she was seeing this new guy and did I want to see him. Of course I did. She showed me his website profile.’ Her eyes lifted to Dominic. ‘There was nothing there. He was blotted out by the sun which was streaming in from behind him and blurring out the camera lens. Of course I told her he looked nice. How she could even tell I have no idea. You couldn’t make anything out from that photo. You would be lucky to even tell his ethnicity from it.’

  ‘Could you?’ His tone was blunt. He was tired of getting nowhere.

  ‘What?’ Her tone indicated fatigue. Grief was tiring and they had a long way to go yet.

  ‘Tell his ethnicity at least. Do we at least know what ethnicity this man is she met up with?’

  Helen shared a look with Jonathan. A look that pleaded with him to help her. He stepped forward partially blocking Dominic’s view of her.

  ‘Helen?’ Dominic prompted.

  ‘Yes, I could tell. He was white. The man you are looking for is white.’

  ‘Thank you.’ It wasn’t much. It wasn’t much at all, but he was grateful to this couple who were giving it all they could just to stay upright. Dominic moved towards the door. ‘Is there anything else in here, guys?’

  They both shook their heads. The day bearing down on them.

  ‘Let’s move on, then.’

  The walk around the rest of the house was uneventful. For Dominic anyway. For Jonathan and Helen it was something else altogether. They had just found out Julie was dead and here they were walking around her house.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’ Dominic shook Jonathan’s hand at the side of the road. They’d stripped out of their Tyvek suits and looked to be your average human again, rather than the Tellytubbies’ rather odd cousins.

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘If there was nothing there, then there was nothing there. We can’t fabricate evidence,’ Dominic reassured him. ‘Much as we’d love to find something immediately and clear this right up for you, it often doesn’t work that way. We’re methodical and we’ll do it right.’ He looked at Helen. ‘Do you know the dating site she used?’

  Helen shook her head. ‘It was one of the new ones. I don’t know which one. I wasn’t paying attention. I was looking at the photo of the guy she was meeting. I told her he looked nice. It’s what she wanted to hear, wasn’t it? I couldn’t tell her anything else, could I?’

  ‘You couldn’t,’ Hayley jumped in. ‘It’s what we do. Our friends, our loved ones, they want support and we offer it. Regardless of what we really think. You had no way of knowing if this guy was on the level or not. It may be that he was. We might all be jumping to conclusions. We need to speak to him to rule him out of our enquiry.’

  ‘So, it might not even be him?’ She clung on to the hope Hayley had offered her.

  ‘We don’t know anything at this point so there’s nothing gained in getting ahead of ourselves. One step at a time.’ It was Hayley’s turn to reach out and grab an arm. She squeezed Helen’s. Helen inclined her head in thanks.

  ‘I’ll meet you tomorrow?’ Jonathan asked, about the identification procedure.

  ‘Yes. At the hospital. I’ll see you there.’ Dominic gave him his card with contact details on. ‘We’ll allocate you a family liaison officer, but in the meantime if you have any questions don’t hesitate to give me a call.’ He was asking for trouble and it should all go through the FLO but he could see Julie in the ground and wanted to do what he could for her brother. To bring peace to her family and, in turn, to her. Whatever form that took, he would do it. ‘We’ll also need to inform Social Care that Ed is currently living with you. They’ll be in touch with you relatively quickly. It’s a process in situations like this.’

  Helen’s shoulders drooped like she had all the weight she could carry on them, but she gave a quick nod and ushered her bereft husband towards home.

  They watched as Jonathan and Helen drove away.

  ‘You think it’s the dating guy?’ asked Hayley once they were out of sight.

  Dominic shook his head. ‘I don’t know. She could have seen him and then walked away into the arms of her killer. CSU will seize her laptop, maybe the dating site or app is on there and we can ID him that way. The sooner we can
find him the sooner we can eliminate him from our enquiries.’

  They were only standing in front of the house for a couple of minutes when they heard a gentle cough at their side.

  Dominic turned. Approaching them from their left was an older woman with grey hair and a little dog on a lead. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she said, not looking in the least bit as though she was sorry. ‘But I saw you enter Julie’s house with Jonathan a while ago, and the thing is, I haven’t seen Julie and Ed in what seems like an age. Can I ask who you are and where Julie and Ed are? I’m worried, you see, it’s not that I’m nosey.’

  Dominic imagined the truth was she was probably a little of both. She desperately wanted to know who had entered her neighbour’s address but she was also worried about her younger friend who she hadn’t seen for a while. He could always fudge the truth, be the cagey police officer, but she was about to see the CSU van and that would set tongues wagging. Maybe the neighbour could help?

  ‘Jonathan is worried about his sister. He hasn’t seen her for a while and doesn’t know where she is. Have you seen her about lately?’ He already knew the answer to this one. The answer was in a refrigerator at the morgue. But it would lead on to the other questions.

  The woman put her free hand up to her chest. ‘Oh, no. I haven’t seen her. I did wonder. Poor girl, I do hope she is all right. Do you think she will be okay?’

  ‘We need to find out what’s happened to her.’ Dominic skirted the issue. ‘Have you seen anyone around the house that you don’t recognise? With Julie perhaps?’ His hopes raised. She was obviously nosey enough to be paying some attention. If this guy, Christian maybe, came to the house to pick her up, he may have been seen and they might be able to obtain a description.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t see anyone with Julie. She’s a lovely woman but kind of keeps to herself, if you know what I mean. Comes and goes but doesn’t talk to the neighbours much. I’m not sure anyone knows much about Julie. Even I only know her name, that she has that great boy and that Jonathan is her brother — and that was because I was in the garden one summer morning as he was visiting. Lovely chap he is — and his wife as well. Seem a close family.’ She stopped for a minute then realised she had missed something. ‘What about Ed? Where’s Ed?’

  ‘He’s fine. He’s with his uncle and aunt at the minute being looked after.’

  She sighed, her relief obvious. She wasn’t any help but wanted to stay and get the inside track on what the police were doing.

  ‘I’ll get someone to come around and get a quick statement from you at some point, maybe tomorrow. Just to say when you last saw Julie, if you don’t mind?’ Dominic said.

  The dog tugged on the lead — he was bored standing on the pavement. Dominic couldn’t say he blamed him. Headlights appeared behind the woman and started to slow down as they got closer. It was the CSU. Dominic pulled out his notebook. ‘It’s Mrs . . . ?’

  ‘Hughes, from next door.’

  Dominic scribbled it down and closed his book. ‘Thank you for your time, Mrs Hughes. We appreciate it. I have to go and talk to these officers now. But we’ll be in touch.’

  Her lips pursed but she smiled tightly and turned around back the way she had come from. ‘Come along, Walter, we can finish listening to that book.’

  ‘DS Harrison?’ A tall slender man climbed out of the CSU van.

  Dominic held out his hand. ‘Dominic.’

  The man took his hand, his grip firm and strong. ‘Andrew Greaves. I’ll be in charge of processing the house this evening. Is there anything you are looking for in particular?’

  Dominic let out a breath. ‘I’m sorry, no. She went missing and was found in a shallow grave earlier today. Any signs of struggle, the usual electronic equipment to be seized. We don’t have her phone. I don’t know if it’s in the house. It wasn’t with the body.’

  Greaves acknowledged Dominic’s needs then turned away; they had a job to do and it was getting late. He wanted to get on. Dominic walked to the car with Hayley in tow behind him.

  ‘Time to send everyone home. We can pick up where we left off tomorrow,’ he said as he climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘This doesn’t feel like it’s going to be one of those cases where we close it in a day or two. You know the odds. The longer the killer is left out there, the more likely it is he stays out there, free.’

  Chapter 16

  Dominic

  The drive home was one of those where Dominic couldn’t remember the specifics of the journey. That was until the woman ran in front of his car, her hands waving for Dominic to stop. There was no need to wave, the fact that there was suddenly a human in front of him pretty much assured the woman that the brakes would be applied.

  Dominic hadn’t been travelling at any speed and easily glided to a halt, then climbed out the car.

  The woman was on him immediately, her voice high-pitched and panicky. ‘Quick. Help. Help me. She’s inside. It’s burning.’

  It was at the mention of burning that Dominic turned in the direction the woman had run from. The semi-detached house was mostly in darkness, other than a light in an upstairs window. It was the blackened smoke that was twisting out of the open doorway that made his heart stop.

  The woman grabbed his jacket in her fists, balling the cloth under his chin. ‘Help her.’

  Under the street light Dominic could see the woman’s eyes were wild, her pupils dilated, filling her irises. Her face was streaked with soot.

  ‘Someone’s in there?’ He gently took hold of her wrists, ready to pull them away.

  ‘My daughter. My daughter . . . her bedroom.’ Tears streaked through the ash on her face. ‘Please . . .’

  People were starting to gather on the pavement. Staring alternatively between the burning house and the stricken woman in front of Dominic.

  ‘Call the fire brigade,’ Dominic shouted at them. Hoping it had already been done and he hadn’t needed to actually remind the people watching to do the simplest of jobs. ‘Which bedroom?’ he asked the woman.

  The woman paused. Stumped by the question.

  ‘Front, back?’ He tried to clarify.

  ‘Front.’ She leapt away from him, urging him forward.

  Dominic ran towards the house, pushed his way through a group of neighbours, nearly tripped over a pair of huge feet, but steadied himself and headed towards the door.

  He could feel the heat as soon as he approached. The fire was well under way. A primal urge stopped him in his tracks as the blaze bore down on him. No one was heading into the death trap that was the house in front of him. What was he thinking pushing his way to the front like this?

  He looked behind him at the neighbours. All of them safe on the street. The searing inferno reflected in wide eyes. He could stay here. Safe. Heated only by the flames in front of him, not by the fires burning around him.

  Common sense told him to do as everyone else was doing and to wait for the fire department, but how could he when there was a child in the building who was losing her life with every second he wavered outside? The people watching wanted him to go in, to risk his life for that child. He could feel the weight of their expectation on him and it spurred him on.

  Dominic pulled his jacket off and draped it over his head.

  He took a step forward onto the doorstep, scanned the inside of the house. The fire was downstairs. It looked to have taken hold at the back of the house, where the kitchen appeared to be situated. Fire was licking its way up the doorframe between the kitchen and living room. Smoke was billowing from the flames and winding its way across the ceiling out past Dominic towards the oxygen rich air outdoors.

  Dominic took one last look at the woman in the street behind him. If the fire was downstairs how had she not managed to save her own daughter who was upstairs? He didn’t have time to consider that now. The only way the girl was going to get out of there was if he entered the property.

  With head bent he stepped inside.

  The stairs were direct
ly in front of him. They were dark and wafts of smoke were following him up each step. Time was not on his side and he took the stairs two at a time. Once he reached the landing he turned right, towards the front of the house, facing two doors.

  The heat was incredible up here. Burning through the floor. He didn’t have much time. He needed to get into each room and find the child and bring her out as quickly as he could.

  He thought back to the image in his mind of the house when he saw it from outside. One bedroom had a light on. Was this the room with the child in? Which side of the house was it? Dominic closed his eyes for a brief second, brought the image up, then rapidly opened the door on the left.

  The light was on.

  There was a bed in the corner and under the covers a lump. Dominic rushed over to it and pulled the quilt back. Curled underneath was a young girl who looked no more than five years of age. He scooped both arms underneath her and pulled her to him. Her eyelids fluttered but she kept them closed.

  ‘It’s okay, sweetie. Keep your eyes tightly closed until we get out of here. I’ve got you now.’ He murmured into her ear. Her eyelids scrunched up and stayed scrunched. Her hands were in little fists by her shoulders. Her whole body was the same, curled tight and rigid. She’d been hiding from the fire, hoping it wouldn’t find her under her covers, probably the same way monsters never find you when you’re under your bedding.

  The room was filling with smoke. Dominic coughed out the dirty air and turned towards the door. Out the corner of his eye a blue light spun through the thin fabric of the little girl’s curtains.

  Help was here.

  The landing was darker than he recalled it. The smoke was thicker, making visibility more difficult. Dominic found the bannister and clung to it with one hand while his other hand hugged the child tightly to him.

  He couldn’t see anything now but relied on the handrail to guide his descent. As he reached the bottom the heat pushed him back a step. The fire moving further into the room and towards the door.

  From under his coat he tried to see in front of him. The fire wasn’t blocking his route out yet. He had to force himself to push forward regardless of the heat. It was the only way they were going to make it out of here.