The Blood Whisperer

by Zoe Sharp

And because she was too weary to argue, she did—almost. When it came to Matthew Lytton she felt the need to be slightly more reticent and she wasn’t sure why. She still couldn’t quite decide what she felt about him and because she would struggle to explain that to the detective, she left it out.

  Throughout, O’Neill sat without fidgeting, without interruption and let her tell the story in her own way.

  At the end of it she picked up half the toastie, now completely cold and finished her lukewarm chocolate. The rain had petered out into indifference leaving behind dirty grey clouds like a sulk.

  “I want to offer you a deal Kelly,” O’Neill said. His voice was terse as if a part of him disapproved of what he was about to do even as he did it. “All unofficial and off the record. I can take care of the CCTV outside the lab so neither of us was ever there. If you’re caught I’ll deny this conversation ever took place.”

  “You make it sound so tempting,” she shot back. “What do I get out of this?”

  “The chance to prove your innocence—and not just for Tyrone Douet’s murder.”

  Kelly eyed him with mistrust. “OK, let me rephrase that. What do you get out of this?”

  O’Neill shook his head. “Let’s just say I have my reasons and leave it at that. I don’t think you’re in a strong bargaining position here.”

  “Why me?”

  He shrugged. “Why not? With you on the loose certain people might come out of the woodwork and show themselves.”

  Kelly gave a short bitter laugh. “You want me to act as bait.”

  “In a way,” he agreed. “But I have to act on evidence as much as instinct. You have a free hand. No restrictions, no rules.”

  “Not to mention no retreat, no resources and every copper in London on the lookout for me.”

  “We’ve taken the watch off your flat,” he said casually. “Can’t justify tying up the manpower when you’d be an idiot to go back there.” He smiled. “At least you’ll have a bolt-hole. And transport—if that heap of rust you own actually runs.”

  Kelly knew this was a trap of some sort but right now she was short on options. And it was better than the alternative which offered no choice at all. Absently she broke a corner off the remaining half of her toastie then let it fall. Her appetite had deserted her.

  “I don’t know where to start,” she admitted at last.

  O’Neill clearly took that as a sign of acquiescence. He rose, reached into his jacket and pulled out a photo of an elderly man with a whiskery face threaded by veins, wearing a check shirt and quilted waistcoat that marked him as country rather than town.

  Kelly took the picture cautiously. “Who’s this?”

  “That’s Brian Stubbs,” O’Neill said. “He’s Harry Grogan’s resident vet.”

  She gave the picture more attention, thought she saw a haunted desperation captured in the man’s tired eyes. When she went to slide the picture into her backpack O’Neill calmly took it back. Being caught with it she realised would lead to all sorts of awkward questions for both of them.

  “Even if I found him I don’t have any right to question him and he certainly doesn’t have to give me any answers.”

  O’Neill slipped the picture away and buttoned his jacket. “You’re a resourceful girl Kelly. I’m sure you’ll work something out.”

  Girl, she thought. I’m older than you are sonny.

  “I was a crime-scene tech not an investigator.”

  “You trying to persuade me to nick you after all?” He cocked his head on one side, stared down at her. “I’ve read your file Kelly, you were an excellent investigator.”

  “Nevertheless I don’t think I can do this on my own.” She wasn’t sure as she said it if she was asking for his help personally or simply permission to involve someone else.

  His expression flickered. “That’s your decision,” he said. “Just bear in mind—if you were set up last time—that takes a coordinated effort rather than a series of blunders by people who had access to all the evidence. Not just whoever was in charge of the case but whoever took care of the crime scene.” He paused meaningfully. “Be careful who you trust Kelly.”

  Kelly got to her feet, the dizziness in her mind very little to do with lack of food or sleep and threw him a troubled glance.

  “Does that include you?”

  77

  O’Neill stood under the café awning and watched the slight figure hurrying away towards the Tube station at Lambeth North. He thought of the cellphone in the inside pocket of his jacket. If he made the call now he could have her picked up before she went underground.

  He let her go.

  After all, he’d told Kelly that her flat was a safe haven. Bearing in mind that she seemed able to get in and out of the place without being seen from the street, the chances were she’d take the risk and go back. If it came to it he could always reacquire her there even if it meant laying in wait inside.

  But that was a last resort.

  O’Neill sighed. He’d taken the risk and planted the seeds. All he could do now was hope something fruitful grew from them.

  He turned away, flicked open his phone and hit speed dial. “Dempsey?” he said when the call was answered. “How’s it coming with the tail on Frank Allardice?”

  “Fine boss,” Dempsey said. “A couple of our guys picked him up outside his hotel this morning and they’ve been on him ever since.”

  “Well remind them not to get too close. Allardice might be an old bastard but that doesn’t mean he’s not still a canny old bastard.”

  78

  For the last ten minutes Ray McCarron had been fumbling with a jar of instant coffee, trying in vain to get it open one-handed. Finally he wedged the body of the jar into a kitchen drawer and leaned his hip against the drawer front while he twisted off the lid with a grunt of triumph.

  The effort left him breathless, perspiration sheening his forehead. He sank gratefully onto a stool, chin on his chest, not moving until the boiling kettle caught his attention. He watched it bubbling furiously for a second or two. It seemed more intent on steaming the blown-vinyl paper from the ceiling than clicking itself off.

  McCarron eyed the appliance malevolently. “Don’t you start,” he growled. It was only when he got laboriously to his feet that the kettle took the hint and subsided.

  He had discharged himself from hospital that morning, unwilling to put up with the disturbed nights and being treated like a half-witted geriatric for any longer. Just because a man was over sixty didn’t mean he’d entirely lost his marbles.

  Not that McCarron wasn’t grateful—for the most part. The surgeons had done a remarkable job piecing his elbow back together which was the worst of his injuries. It was now encased in a glass-fibre cast that was supposed to be lighter and less cumbersome than the old plaster of Paris, even if it didn’t feel that way.

  He’d managed to satisfy them that his skull was solid enough to withstand a few knocks without going Humpty Dumpty on them. Although they’d initially suspected internal bleeding, a few nights’ observation had proved this fear unfounded. And if his ribs hurt like the devil, it was bearable if he didn’t laugh, cough or breathe too deeply.

  He was, he told them, a tough bastard who didn’t break easily and he had proved this by managing to walk out to a waiting taxi more or less unaided. Then he shook with delayed reaction most of the way home.

  Once back in the empty house in Hillingdon he half-regretted his bravado. Sure they’d packed him off with enough painkillers to dose an army but McCarron had never liked taking anything stronger than aspirin.

  And besides, all the pill bottles had childproof tops that were more or less impossible to remove with only one working hand.

  He shuffled over to the kettle, discovering when he got there that the sugar bowl was empty. He leaned against the counter and closed the eye that wasn’t still half-closed from the beating. And he wondered at how such a mundane task—one that he’d normally accomplish while reading a report and wi
th a phone clamped to one ear—could possibly have become so damn difficult.

  The loud knock at the front door made him jump which was not a good idea for a number of reasons. The stabbing pain in his ribs knocked the breath out of him again and as he swung around the cast caught against the open jar of coffee. It skittered across the worktop and went smashing down onto the kitchen tiles scattering brown ant-like granules along with splinters of broken glass across the entire floor.

  McCarron tried instinctively to save it falling. A mistake. By the time the haze of pain had lifted enough for him to see clearly, Kelly Jacks was standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “Kel for God’s sake!” he mumbled through stiff lips. “What are you doing here?”

  “I heard the crash,” she said. “Don’t move until I’ve cleared up this glass. You should have slippers.”

  McCarron looked down at his rumpled socks. “I do,” he said, rueful. “Couldn’t get the bloody things on.”

  But he kept still until she’d found a dustpan and brush from the cupboard under the stairs and swept him a clear path back to the stool. He went meekly, too shocked to put up a fight.

  “What are you doing here?” McCarron repeated, watching her start methodically cleaning up the floor a square at a time the way he’d trained her to do. He didn’t ask how she’d got past the front door which he knew he’d locked behind him. “Not just here in my kitchen but here at all?”

  There was a fractional pause in her rhythmic brushing. “Aren’t I allowed to come and check on my boss to see how he’s getting on?”

  “I would have thought you’d have been too busy—evading the police and so on,” he said bluntly. “I’ve been in hospital Kel, not incommuni-bloody-cado. They still get news there. They’re saying you . . . had another blackout.”

  She sat back on her heels and regarded him with clear eyes. “I didn’t do it Ray,” she said. “But you already knew that didn’t you?”

  The words hung between them like a tangible entity, dark and bitter. McCarron froze as if any sudden moves would provoke it to attack. And right then he couldn’t quite decide if the weight he’d carried on his shoulders for the past six years had just lifted or grown abruptly heavier.

  In his heart he knew that it was all over and a part of him was profoundly relieved. Even so, he put up a token resistance.

  “Hey you know I’ve always had faith in you—”

  “But you never needed it,” she cut in, her voice cool. “Not when you knew—you knew—that I was innocent. That doesn’t require any great leap of faith.”

  He took in a shaky breath and found he couldn’t think of a damned thing to say.

  After a moment Kelly dropped her gaze away, continued sweeping briskly. When she had the spilt coffee and glass in a manageable pile, she unfolded a newspaper from the stack he’d put aside for recycling and scooped it all into the centre, wrapping it up carefully afterwards.

  “Where’s your bin?”

  “By the back door. Look Kel—” he began, but she was already gone. He heard the lid of the wheelie bin slam shut, the back door close again as she returned.

  “If that was your only jar of coffee will tea do?”

  McCarron could only nod. He hadn’t budged from his perch and now he watched her while she moved easily around his kitchen, digging out teabags, a box of longlife milk he kept in for emergencies and a teapot that hadn’t been used since his wife moved out.

  “You’re looking . . . well,” he managed.

  She glanced over her shoulder with what might have been a fleeting smile. “I can’t say the same for you. You should have stayed in the hospital.”

  “I’d have been gaga inside a week.”

  “Hmm,” she said, apparently absorbed in prodding the teabags inside the pot, “it’s no fun being detained against your will is it?”

  McCarron winced but knew he deserved that—and plenty more besides.

  “What do you want Kelly love?” he asked quietly. “An apology?”

  “What use is one of those?” She shook her head. “No Ray I want an explanation. Because right now the only reasons I can think of for you helping set me up are threats or bribery.” She put the lid back on the teapot and turned to face him, folding her arms. “So which was it?”

  79

  McCarron said, “It started with Allardice—you remember him?”

  The name conjured up a face instantly in Kelly’s mind. An arrogant copper who’d handled her numerous interrogations and made no secret of the fact that he was convinced from the outset she was guilty as sin.

  And a second memory hit her almost in rebound to the first. O’Neill’s words back at the café.

  “. . . That takes a coordinated effort rather than a series of blunders by people who had access to all the evidence . . .”

  “There may be many things I’ve forgotten, Ray, but DCI Allardice is not one of them.”

  “Well you were never going to be his bosom pal after you argued with him about that dead prostitute case. Know the one?”

  “The girl who was beaten to death in that dingy little hotel near Euston,” Kelly said. “They put it down to some random customer who got carried away. I still hold that she was deliberately murdered.”

  They had moved through into the front sitting room. The majority of the floor space was taken up by an old-fashioned floral suite that was so big it stopped the door opening fully. There were old family photographs on the tiled mantelpiece and glass-fronted display cabinets in the alcoves on either side, crammed to bursting with knick-knacks forlorn beneath a layer of dust.

  Kelly had been invited round once or twice before but previously the room had always seemed to fade into the background compared to her vigorous boss. Now it was the dominating factor and he looked suddenly very old and vulnerable, swamped by his surroundings.

  His condition didn’t help and he was clearly tiring. When he lowered himself with great care onto one end of the sofa and leaned his head back it was hard to tell where the greying antimacassar ended and he began.

  “Allardice was all over that hooker murder from the beginning even if he kept away from things officially,” he said at last, taking a sip of the tea she handed to him. “It was only when it dragged on that he put himself in charge.”

  “The most basic questions weren’t answered,” Kelly said, her voice level but with an underlying hint of stubborn. “What was a high-class working girl doing in a dive like that? And her injuries—she’d been tortured before she was killed. What did they want to know? And the place had been not just wiped down but professionally sanitised—”

  McCarron held up his uninjured hand in submission. “All right, all right. I remember you weren’t convinced.”

  “Maybe because there was a lot about it that was unconvincing.”

  McCarron started to shake his head, caught himself just in time with only a minor flinch. “We were there to deal with the what, where and how not the why,” he reminded her.

  “Allardice didn’t seem to give a damn about any of that,” she countered. “He just wanted the whole thing closed.”

  “He wasn’t alone there. As you pointed out, the girl was part of a high-class stable. There were plenty of supposedly very respectable people sweating when you wouldn’t let it lie.”

  McCarron shifted uncomfortably against the cushions although whether he was trying to find an easier position for his ribs or his conscience Kelly couldn’t be sure.

  “Afterwards I heard a rumour Allardice might have taken a kickback from somebody high up to put it to bed—if you’ll excuse the pun,” he said. “Too much scrutiny from the law being bad for business. And he always did have a very . . . casual attitude towards women in general and pros in particular.”

  Kelly tried to work out if she was surprised by this information. From what she remembered of the chauvinistic detective, probably not. His view of the proper role of women was formulated somewhere back in the Stone Age and had not been updated sinc
e.

  “Well he got his way didn’t he?”

  McCarron didn’t reply straight away and when he did his voice was strained. “You let it be known you weren’t happy to let that one go love,” he said. “You kept digging. It became almost . . . an obsession.”

  “She was twenty-three years old,” Kelly said stonily. “She deserved justice.”

  “I’m not saying she didn’t. Just that sometimes you have to pick your battles. And that one you were never going to win.”

  “Did you help Allardice set me up for the Perry murder to stop me digging?” she demanded. “Is that what happened?”