by M K Farrar
She choked back a sob and forced herself to clamber back to her feet. Yes, she was hurt, but Ollie was still trapped in his nightmare, and she was the only one who could help him. She approached him, but more warily this time. She’d never even thought about Ollie hurting her before—he was a gentle soul and he’d be so upset when he realised what had happened—but for now she had to be careful.
“Ollie,” she raised her voice this time. “Ollie, it’s time to wake up now.”
He still seemed to be caught in his dream, thrashing his arms around. Did he think he was putting out the fire? A more horrible thought occurred to her. Or was he dreaming that he was the one on fire?
She wasn’t going to leave him struggling. Her heart pounded, and she felt weak from pain and adrenaline, but she reacted without thinking. She was far more concerned about what Ollie was going through than herself. She knew this was going to take some thinking through, but now was not the time.
Sliding onto the bed behind him, she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re okay. It was just a bad dream. You’re safe now.”
She had his arms pinned to his sides with hers, and he struggled against her for a moment. “I’m here, Ollie. Mallory is here.”
His body suddenly went loose, and then he tensed again. “Mallory?”
He was awake.
“It’s okay, I’m here,” she continued to reassure him. “You were just having a nightmare.”
“The fire.” He let out a sob, and his body shook.
“I know, buddy. I know.”
That bloody fire.
She’d been beating herself up about the fire ever since it had happened. If only she’d gone over what could be dangerous with him more often, or maybe told him not to use the toaster at all. If the fire hadn’t happened, things would be easier for her, and Oliver would never have gone through the trauma of it.
She held him tight, letting the shudders work their way out of his muscles. Even as she sat there, she could feel her vision getting smaller as the skin surrounding her eye swelled, blocking it out. She needed to get some ice on it, but she wasn’t going anywhere until Ollie had settled back down.
Ten minutes passed before he grew heavy in her arms and his breathing slowed and calmed. She edged out of the way, allowing him to lie back down while she perched on the edge. Ollie rolled onto his side, and she rubbed his back until she was sure he was asleep again.
She hoped he’d sleep through until morning now.
Cautiously, she got to her feet and slipped from the room. She was careful to avoid the mirror in the hallway, not wanting to catch sight of herself. It would be better after she applied some ice.
She went downstairs and walked into the kitchen. She found a clean tea towel and got some ice from the freezer and wrapped it up. Taking a seat at the kitchen table, she placed the ice to her eyes. Pain shot through her face, and she sucked air in over her teeth. She still didn’t want to look at it, but she was going to have to before she went into work.
Mallory glanced at the kitchen clock. It was after four now. Was it even worth going back to bed? Would she sleep? She was worried she’d go to sleep and wake up and her face would be even worse.
She wasn’t someone who wore a lot of foundation and concealer normally, but she was going to need it now.
Chapter Thirteen
The following morning, before heading back into the office, Ryan returned to the crime scene.
Because of the size of the property, severity of the crime, and number of victims, the crime scene hadn’t yet been released, and SOCO—though in reduced numbers to what they had been initially—were still working on it.
Blue-and-white police tape was stretched across the front of the property, blocking access. He ducked under it and approached the front door where a bored-looking uniformed officer stood. The scene continued to be protected, both from reporters and sightseers and just kids who wanted to dare each other to enter the ‘murder house’. The officer was young and probably the newest member on the force, hence getting landed with this job. At least it wasn’t raining, but there was a chill in the air, and he had his hands stuffed into his armpits to try to keep them warm.
He took a more formal stance upon seeing Ryan.
Ryan held up his ID. “DI Chase. I need to take another look at the property.”
“Of course.” He stepped out of the way.
Ryan slipped on a pair of gloves and some protective footwear. He wasn’t totally sure what he thought he was going to find this time around, only that he wanted to see the place with fresh eyes.
How could a building that seemed so normal from the outside have housed such horrors? Sometimes he did wonder about the number of places he drove or walked past on a daily basis that had hidden atrocities. He knew from experience that people did terrible things to each other all the time, and those were just the things they found out about. How many walls had seen things even he would find shocking?
He entered the hallway and paused for a moment, trying to see things through the killer’s eyes. Would he or she have come in this way? They’d have been in full view of all the neighbours. No, more likely they came in through the back entrance and ran through to quickly disable the alarm. The rear door opened onto a small garden which had a gate at the far end that led onto a narrow alleyway. The search team had already worked that area, since it was clearly an escape route for the perpetrator, and had come up empty-handed. They’d checked the back alley for any CCTV, but unfortunately, there hadn’t been any.
But Ryan wasn’t there to find evidence right now, he was there to get into the head of the killer.
This house hadn’t been chosen at random. Whoever the killer was had known the house, known the family. This had been carefully orchestrated.
He remembered how Liz Wyndham had reported that she’d thought someone had been watching the house, and that had been the reason they’d installed the home alarm. Maybe she’d been right.
Ryan inwardly chided himself. He should have got his hands on that report by now. He’d have to make sure it was first on his list when he got back into the office.
He stood in the back garden, taking everything in. How many people would have seen someone entering or leaving from this position? There was no additional lighting, so in the middle of the night it would have been dark. Even if someone had happened to look out of a window, it would have been unlikely the perp would have been spotted. The moon had been new, so there hadn’t been any moonlight to help either. Had the killer timed it so that would be the case?
At the previous day’s briefing, the findings of the post-mortem had been fed back to the team, including the SOCO coordinator, Ben Glazier. The findings about the family’s final meal and them being drugged had put a new slant on what they’d been investigating.
There had been a slow cooker found in the kitchen, which could have been what the stew the family had eaten the night before had been cooked in. Unfortunately, it had also been washed up, but it had still been seized and was being tested for the drug diphenhydramine. The kitchen and outside bins had also been gone through for signs of food that might have been scraped off plates, but it appeared the family were all good eaters and there hadn’t been any waste. Still, it made sense that the stew was the source of the drugs. If it had been slow cooked, it had been sitting on the side in the kitchen, most likely unattended, which would have given whoever drugged it ample opportunities.
His thoughts still went back to the possibility one of the victims had somehow been involved. It was the access to the house that kept throwing him. Who had access to the place on a regular basis? Did they have tradespeople coming in? A cleaner, perhaps?
Ryan switched positions, entering via the rear of the building. When he’d opened the back door, he would have set off the timer on the alarm, giving him thirty seconds to get to the front of the house and plug in the code to disable it. The problem was, there was only one time when the alarm ha
d been disabled on the night of the murders, and that had been at 3.27 a.m., the time when the killer must have left, or else they’d have found him or her in the house with the victims, assuming the killer wasn’t also one of the victims.
The killer was already in the house.
Ryan suddenly knew this was a certainty, as though someone had whispered the thought in his head.
They’d only disabled the alarm when they’d left, and then reset it again. There was no other time the alarm had been touched after that until the bodies had been found. Unless the killer had been someone in the house—such as Sheldon Wyndham—they must have left when the alarm had been reset in the early hours.
That was how they’d been able to move around the house and prepare it for the attack. They’d already been inside the property. They’d drugged the family via a family meal, knowing it would make them sleep deeply enough to allow them to do what was needed without being seen. Then they’d hidden somewhere in the house, waiting until the early hours, when they’d emerged, stolen and hidden the phones, trapped the kids in their rooms, and then went to murder Hugh Wyndham first.
Ryan ran his hand over his mouth, certain he was right.
But where would the assailant have secreted himself? This house wasn’t huge, but it did have options. A large store cupboard was under the stairs. An airing cupboard housing a boiler on the first floor. Large built-in wardrobes. Maybe the killer had even been under a bed.
The idea sent icy fingers down Ryan’s spine. He wasn’t someone who spooked easily, but the thought of a killer hiding unnoticed in a house while the family went about their business, unaware of a stranger in their midst, was creepy as hell.
The windows in the house were all the same, and all of them were locked from the inside with a tiny silver key. There was no way the killer could have gained access to the house through a window, unless one had been left open, and he’d climbed through and then pulled it shut and locked it after him.
Ryan realised he was thinking of the killer as being male. That wasn’t always the case, as he’d found out not so long ago with the Clara Reed case, and he needed to keep his mind open. He couldn’t see a woman murdering a little girl, but it did happen.
He fished out his phone and called Mallory.
“I think the killer was already inside the house,” he said before she could get a word in.
“What?”
“I think that’s how they drugged them, how they knew where their phones were kept, and how they knew the alarm code. I think they were already in the house with the family, and they may even have been for some time.”
“Do you mean without the family knowing about it?” she asked.
“Yes, I think so.”
“Jesus Christ, that’s terrifying. How were they not seen?”
“That part, I haven’t figured out yet,” he admitted. “There are plenty of hiding places. I’m going to get the Scenes of Crime officers to check obscure places like the inside of wardrobes and under beds for fingerprints and DNA.”
“Would it have been someone the family knew, or a complete stranger?”
“Honestly, it could go either way at this point, but I feel like they must have known the house beforehand, otherwise how would they have known where to hide where they wouldn’t be spotted? I also think they knew the family’s routines.”
“Didn’t Liz Wyndham’s friend say she’d been paranoid someone was watching the house and that’s why she’d had the alarm installed?”
“That’s right. I need to look at that report. But what if when she had the alarm installed, the intruder was already inside the house. Perhaps he or she even listened in on the instructions the alarm company gave them when they installed it?”
“You’re giving me the chills.”
“Yeah, I felt the same way.”
Ryan glanced around. Was it even possible the perpetrator was still here? No, that was crazy thinking. The amount of police who’d swarmed over this place would have sent any killer running. Plus, the alarm had been disabled and reset at 3.27 a.m. That had been when the killer had left, via the back door, out into the garden and into the alleyway beyond.
Ryan remembered what Ben had said about finding traces of blood in the bathtub and bathroom. The killer had taken time to clean himself up, change his clothes or removed whatever he’d used to protect his own skin and clothing with. He had taken his time, but been thorough, and when he was satisfied with the clean-up, he’d casually disabled the alarm, reset it again, and left.
He’d treated this place like his own.
Ryan left the house via the back again. Would the killer have turned left or right from the back gate? Which way was less populated? Ryan tried both and discovered the road the lane came out on to the right had fewer houses—one of the buildings was a Chinese takeaway, the other a newsagent. If only one of them had had CCTV on the outside, not just inside. His officers had already questioned the shop owners, and no one had seen anything. Of course, they’d all have been shut at that time. Had the killer continued on foot, or was there a vehicle nearby that he’d used? Ryan wished there was a way of knowing for sure.
He needed to get his hands on that report.
Liz Wyndham had been paranoid about someone watching her. Could it have been the same person who’d somehow secreted themselves in the Wyndhams’ house?
Chapter Fourteen
The office was its usual hustle and bustle. Ryan nodded morning greetings to those he made eye contact with and went to his desk. He sat and fired up his computer. He needed that report.
A few clicks on the mouse, and he was able to pull it up.
Liz Wyndham had kept a record of times and dates where she’d seen a white van across the street. She’d noted it down as being a Ford Transit, which she thought was fairly new, but she wasn’t able to tell the year. Frustratingly, the report also said the number plate was always obscured in some way—whether it was with dirt or missing altogether. Considering she’d taken the time to report it to the police, the sightings hadn’t been that often or for long. She’d recorded seeing the van twice the second week in July and again the first week of August and then twice again the week after. Each time, the van had driven slowly down the road, as though watching out for something, or else had been parked across the street, only to drive away once she’d noticed it. She hadn’t given a description of who was driving, but thought it was a man on his own.
Ryan felt strangely disappointed. He’d been expecting for the sightings to have been more regular and numbered than that. If the van’s plate hadn’t been obscured, would Liz have even noticed the vehicle? Had the driver’s attempt to make the van unrecordable ironically done the opposite? Could he even prove it had been the same vehicle?
There was something else. If whoever was driving the van had something to do with the Wyndham murders and used the same vehicle the night of their deaths, they were bound to have obscured the licence plate again. But if they were able to pinpoint a white van around that area on the night of the murders which had an obscured licence plate, Ryan thought he would be able to say with reasonable confidence that it was both the same van that Liz had reported and so would most likely belong to the killer. Having the number plate would go a long way to finding the driver, but it wasn’t the only thing that could be used to recognise it.
They couldn’t have done that all the time, though, without eventually getting pulled over and questioned by the police. Considering what they’d been planning, Ryan imagined that was the last thing they’d have wanted. But they might well have scoped out the area with the plate visible on other occasions.
He spotted Mallory sitting at her desk, her black hair over one side of her face. He wanted to bounce his thoughts on that morning’s discoveries off her, so he slipped out of his chair and approached her desk. It occurred to him that she hadn’t said hi to him when he’d come in either.
“Morning,” he said, eyeing her curiously.
“Morning,�
� she replied, still not looking up. Instead, she put her elbow on the table, her fingers pressed to her temples, so her palm shielded her face.
It was clear something was wrong.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Of course, why wouldn’t it be?”
“You’re hiding your face.”
“Yes, I am,” she admitted. “I had a bit of an accident during the night.”
He folded his arms. “Show me.”
She lowered her hand and lifted her chin, and he did his best not to suck in a breath of shock. She’d clearly tried to cover up the bruising with some makeup, but it hadn’t helped, and makeup couldn’t hide the swelling or the way she could barely see out of one eye.
“Jesus, Mallory. How did that happen?”
She rubbed the side of her nose. “I got up in the night to get a drink from the kitchen and turned and smacked my face against the cupboard door in the dark. It was a stupid thing to do. I put some ice on it. I’m sure it’ll be better by the end of the day.”
He highly doubted that. He also doubted her story. Hit it on a cupboard door? How many times had he heard that before? He recognised a punch when he saw one.
But who would have hit her? She hadn’t mentioned a boyfriend being in her life—not that it was any business of his who she dated. He’d make it his business if she had hooked up with someone who treated her like that, though.
He lowered his voice. “Mallory, unless someone held the back of your head and slammed your face into a cupboard door, I highly doubt that was how your injury happened.”
She didn’t meet his eye. “Well, it did.”