The Blood Whisperer

by Zoe Sharp

She watched the reflections of the other passengers as they got on and took the seats around her, too. Nobody seemed to be paying her undue attention.

  Good, so they haven’t put it together yet or they’d be screaming it from the rooftops.

  The DLR train was heading for Bank station. There she hopped across onto the Central line for West Ruislip and rode it out to Hanger Lane, close to the McCarron office.

  She had hesitated briefly over going back there but by the time she’d changed trains her mind was made up.

  It’s not like I have many options.

  She walked the short distance from the station down to the office keeping her cap pulled down, her hood up and her hands stuffed into her pockets. Her arm under the makeshift dressing had subsided into dull painfulness and she still had a vile headache. It had receded with the adrenaline of evading capture but now it was back with a vengeance and making up for lost time.

  Kelly reached the office doorway and let out a long shaky breath as she slipped the keys from her pocket. She hoped the place was empty, weighed up the risk and thought it likely. The chatty woman who’d given her location to Matthew Lytton worked from home. With Ray in hospital the rest of his crew had been working flat out, taking it in turns to pick up messages from the answering service while they were out on jobs.

  Today, she recalled it was the turn of Les and Graham. They were Ray’s most experienced team and specialised in what were referred to round the office as Hoarding Houses which made up a big chunk of the firm’s business. They should be down in Purley clearing a place that had belonged to an elderly eccentric who didn’t seem to have thrown anything away during the thirty years leading up to his death. Les’s estimate had run to five one-ton skips needed to cart away the accumulated rubbish. This had included what seemed to be at least twelve months’ worth of the old guy’s own faeces, carefully bagged and labelled.

  They’d be gone some time.

  Kelly locked the door behind her. Ray, she remembered, had been jumped at the very spot where she was standing.

  Is this a vendetta against all of us rather than just me?

  She shook her head—a mistake—and wearily climbed the stairs to the upper floor.

  There she stepped into the small galley kitchen and lifted the bag of blood out from under her shirt. The seal had proved up to the job. For want of anything better Kelly slid the bag into the fridge. She’d already written the date, time and her name on it in indelible marker. It wasn’t quite chain-of-custody, but it would have to do.

  She raided the office First-Aid kit and properly cleaned her arm. Removing the duct tape hurt like the devil and peeling away the adhesive made the whole thing open up again. It took Kelly a while to slow the bleeding enough to close the edges of the wound with four or five Steri-Strips and wind a sterile dressing in place around it. At least working this job she knew all her jabs were up to date.

  She was tempted by the heavy duty painkillers in the kit but in the end settled for nothing stronger than a couple of paracetamol just to take the edge off it. She thought briefly of the bottle of vodka in the bottom of Ray’s desk but rejected that too.

  If there was one thing she needed now, above all else, it was a clear head.

  Just to sit for a few minutes and catch her thoughts she sank slowly onto one of the chairs around the table where the team gathered to eat their lunches, discuss jobs and write up their reports. Her eyes slid to the places where Tyrone and Ray always sat.

  “Two down,” she said out loud. “Who’s next?”

  Stupid question. It was supposed to be me.

  Reluctantly she got to her feet. If she was going to stay ahead of the police long enough to find answers of her own she was going to need money—of the kind that could not be obtained via a photographed and instantly traceable hole-in-the-wall cash machine.

  The petty cash tin was in the bottom drawer of Ray’s desk next to the vodka bottle. It was secured by a spindly padlock that Kelly had never had the heart to tell her boss could be picked in seconds. As she finessed the tumblers with a safety pin and re-bent paperclip she was thankful she’d spared his feelings.

  There were some skills Kelly had learned in prison that she would be forever grateful for.

  The cash tin held a couple of hundred in mixed notes and maybe twenty quid in loose change. Kelly took the lot, folding it into the leg pocket of her cargoes. She was just looking round on Ray’s cluttered desktop for a scrap of paper she could use to write an apologetic IOU when her eye lighted on a familiar name on the top of a pile of invoices.

  Matthew Lytton.

  She picked up the invoice slowly. It was marked ‘Paid in Full’. Kelly noted the amount Ray had charged Lytton for the clean-up after his wife’s alleged suicide and calculated he’d taken one look at the scope of the country place and doubled the number he’d first thought of.

  But what really caught her attention was the address on the invoice. The country house with the luxury bathroom, it seemed, was not Lytton’s only residence. He’d asked for the paperwork to be sent to another address—in central London.

  Suddenly her next move was clear. Not sensible by any means, but definitely clear.

  Kelly memorised the address and put the invoice back—not on top but a couple down in the stack. After all there was no point in leaving too many clues for the likes of DI O’Neill to follow.

  34

  As soon as Matthew Lytton opened the door to his apartment, he knew something was wrong.

  For one thing it had been daylight when he left so there would have been no reason to switch on the lamps in the living area. And for another he was pretty sure he would have remembered leaving the VH1 music channel playing on the TV, even at low volume.

  His first instinct as he paused in the hallway with one hand still on the open front door was to retreat to a safe distance and call the police. He quickly dismissed that option.

  One way or another he’d had his fill of the police lately.

  That and the fact he’d never heard of burglars who broke in and then made themselves at home to the point of cooking up a meal. The distinctive smell of frying onions drifted out from the kitchen. It was all he could do to stop his stomach growling.

  Lytton cautiously checked his watch. It was close to 2:00 AM. He’d put in another eighteen-hour day at the office and it seemed a hell of a long time since lunch.

  Silently he closed the front door behind him. He kept his car keys and cellphone in his hand as he ventured further inside, moving softly on the hardwood floor.

  As he reached the kitchen he heard the sound of rapid chopping, the sizzle of something fresh being added to a hot pan.

  He edged an eye around the door jamb. Kelly Jacks was cracking eggs into a glass mixing bowl. Her back was towards him but still he recognised her. She was wearing a skinny halter top over baggy cargoes and her feet were bare. He knew he should have been furious at the sheer arrogance of the woman. Instead he found himself admiring her audacity.

  Lytton slipped the keys and phone into his jacket pocket and stepped into the room.

  “I don’t suppose there’s enough for two is there?” he asked tapping her lightly on the shoulder.

  She gave a gasp and spun round. The next thing he knew, the hand he’d laid on her was grabbed, wrenched away and twisted up his back hard and fast. He felt the tearing graunch of over-stressed ligaments in his elbow and wrist.

  The force of it drove him down to his knees in an attempt to yield. All that did was allow her to put the lock on more firmly. The spike of pain took his breath away.

  “Christ! What the—?”

  She froze, finally recognising his voice, relaxed her grip then released him altogether and stepped back quickly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said sounding shaky. “You startled me.”

  Lytton got to his feet slowly, rubbing his wrist. “Yeah well that makes two of us,” he said warily. “Where the hell did you learn that?”

  “Prison.”
<
br />   He’d frightened her, he realised and she’d reacted instinctively—almost without conscious thought.

  “I’m sorry,” she said then, unable to meet his gaze. “Not just for that . . . I know I’m being bloody cheeky coming here like this but I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  Lytton pulled a wry face, flexing his fingers experimentally. “Flattery will get you everywhere.” He nodded to the debris-strewn countertop aware that he was still teetering on the far reaches of anger. “I see you’ve made yourself at home.”

  “I’m sorry,” she muttered again. “I waited but when you didn’t come back after normal close of play I sort of assumed you weren’t going to and—” she shrugged, “—I haven’t eaten.”

  She sounded beaten-down weary. Lytton sighed, moved further into the room. “Well now you’ve started keep going.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the way she tensed as he came past her. He merely went to the cooler and pulled out a bottle of Beck’s. “Drink? I certainly need one after that.”

  She shook her head. He dug out an opener and flipped off the lid then drank from the neck not bothering with a glass. “How did you get in by the way?”

  She’d turned back to the hob, answered over her shoulder. “Not difficult with the security you’ve got.”

  “I had the front door locks changed only a few months ago when . . . when Veronica lost her keys. The guy told me they were nine-lever, whatever that means. He reckoned they were fairly secure.”

  Her lips hitched upwards and almost made it to a smile. “Should have got him to change the ones on the sliding windows at the same time then,” she said. “They’re a joke.”

  Lytton didn’t point out that the balcony onto which those sliding doors opened out was on the fourth floor because he’d heard the cracks in her voice despite the light hearted words. He put down his beer and studied the strain in her face.

  “What’s happened Kelly?”

  She had been holding herself rigid but the gentleness of his voice seemed to crumple her. She looked away sharply, took a deep breath before she raised her head again.

  “Remember Tyrone?” she asked.

  He frowned, was about to ask but then an image of the big black kid she’d been working with opened up in his mind. He nodded.

  She took another breath shaky this time. “He’s dead,” she said flatly. “He was murdered today at a crime scene we were supposed to be cleaning in Millwall.”

  “Christ,” Lytton said. “When did you find out?”

  She fussed for a moment with the pan on the hob turning down the gas to a low simmer before the onions turned to caramel. “When I woke up,” she said in a voice so low he thought for a moment he’d misheard her.

  “When you . . .?” he began then stopped. No wonder she’d overreacted when he came in. “My God . . . you were there.”

  And crowding in on that thought came a bunch of others. He’d read the trial reports after her manslaughter conviction—about the blackout and the murder. That there’d been no previous history or medical evidence presented to suggest Kelly might be prone to such traumatic lapses. Nothing to say she wasn’t lying about the whole thing.

  Clearly judge and jury had believed she was.

  So why should he trust her now?

  “It happened again,” he said but she shook her head and raked a distracted hand through her short choppy hair. He noticed the bandage on her arm as she did so. Had her victim fought back this time?

  “No,” she said more determined now. “I’m beginning to think it never happened in the first place.”

  She waited fiercely for his incredulity. He schooled his face not to present any, leaned his hip against the countertop and folded his arms. “So, what did?”

  “I think I was framed,” she said twisting restlessly away and beginning to pace. Lytton’s eyes fell onto the knife she’d been using to cut the vegetables. It lay casually on the chopping board in full view but he made no moves to stop her getting back to it.

  “I think they gave me something—Rohypnol maybe,” she went on. “Something to make me compliant and make me forget. Then it was just a case of sticking the knife in my hand and leaving me in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Didn’t they test you for possible drugs last time?” he asked.

  “Eventually,” she agreed. “And—surprise, surprise—nothing showed up. That’s why I took this.”

  She yanked open the fridge door and pulled out a small ziplock bag. One corner was filled with liquid that was a dark rich red.

  “Please tell me that isn’t what I think it is?”

  She nodded to the bandage on her arm. “I improvised before I left the scene. I was out for half an hour or so and got away from there just before the cops showed up. Maybe whoever did this miscalculated the dose or whatever. Or maybe they couldn’t afford to have me actually unconscious when the cops arrived. Too many awkward questions.”

  “And you want to get that tested—independent of the police this time?” he guessed.

  She nodded and he saw her desperation in the way her shoulders had begun to sag. If what she said was true he realised she must be in shock to some degree and close to nervous exhaustion. Not to mention suffering a chemical hangover to rival anything induced by alcohol.

  But . . .

  Lytton put his head on one side. “Why did you come here Kelly?”

  She gave him a tired smile. “Process of elimination,” she said. “All this kicked off because I asked questions about your wife’s death. Either you killed her and tried to set me up because I spotted it or you’re completely innocent and you’ll want answers just as much as I do. More, perhaps.”

  He met her eyes. “And how do you know which is the truth?”

  “By what happens next.”

  35

  “Good evening Vince. You’re pulling a late one.”

  DI O’Neill glanced up from signing the on-scene log to see the lead CSI approaching.

  “Hiya Bob,” he said. “I just heard we ID’d the victim. Kid called Tyrone Douet. That makes it one of mine.”

  Bob Tate, a tall cadaverous Scot, lifted the crime-scene tape for him to duck underneath. O’Neill was already wearing booties and gloves. “Oh aye?”

  “Douet worked for a specialist cleaning crew—McCarron’s,” O’Neill said. “Couple of nights ago the boss was beaten up pretty badly. Now this.”

  “Poor sod,” Tate said, pushing his glasses further up his long nose with the back of his own gloved hand. “I knew Ray McCarron when he was one of us. I hadn’t heard.” He paused. “You think there’s a connection?”

  “Doesn’t hurt to look.”

  Tate sighed. “Well it’s going to be a wee while before we’re done here I’m afraid. The scene suffers from an embarrassment of riches as it were. It doesn’t help that there was another death here only yesterday.”

  “Oh aye?” O’Neill said, echoing him. “Anyone I should be aware of?”

  Tate waved a hand towards a dark oily stain around and up against one of the steel support pillars. “Homeless man,” he said. “Managed to set himself on fire with a cigarette and a half-bottle of overproof rum. Bacardi 151 according to the fragments of label. Lethal stuff in more ways than one it seems.”

  O’Neill vaguely recalled that Tate was a Presbyterian and a teetotaller.

  “Accidental?”

  The CSI shrugged. “Not the first time it’s happened and I daresay not the last.”

  “But where did a derelict get hold of something that not only just so happens to be highly flammable but also sells for around seventy quid a bottle?”

  Tate paused again. A tick of irritation crossed his features, eyebrows drawing down. “It wasn’t my call,” he said grimly. “But I’ll be making it my business now.” His eyes drifted back to the burn marks. “At least the cleaners hadn’t begun to sanitise the scene before young Tyrone was attacked. I’m sorry you missed the body by the way.”

  “I spoke to the
pathologist on the way in,” O’Neill dismissed. “As you’re only too aware, he never likes to commit himself but he reckoned the fractured skull would have done for the kid. The fourteen stab wounds just made sure of it.”

  Tate pursed his lips as he eyed the patch of blood-soaked concrete that had until recently been Tyrone Douet’s final resting place. “And then there’s the blood bag of course,” he added.

  “Blood bag?”

  “Oh aye. Didn’t they tell you about that?” Tate shook his head. “When the uniforms arrived on scene they found a little sandwich bag with blood in it and a note saying ‘it wasn’t me’ or some such nonsense.” He glanced at O’Neill, his amusement dying as he realised the other man did not share the joke. “A red herring surely?”