The Blood Whisperer (46 page)

McCarron claimed to be no expert but he didn’t think the outfit would have been flattering even before it was liberally splashed with blood. And being a man of the old school, he kept such an opinion firmly to himself.

“And?” Kelly prompted.

Yana gave her a wounded look but said meekly, “They bring me here. I–I lock myself in bathroom but I
hear
what they do to him.” She raised her head, eyes brimming. “I hear him screaming—”

“It’s all right lovey,” McCarron said hastily, trying to avert the inevitable shed of tears. “You don’t need to go over it again.”

“What about the coat Yana?” Kelly asked. “Where did that come from?”

Yana stared at her for a moment. “C–coat?”

Kelly jerked her head towards the makeshift shroud. McCarron had never understood the fascination for fur. In his opinion it invariably looked far better covering the animal that originally owned it. But, he conceded, maybe that had something to do with the price.

“There was woman with them,” Yana said. She shivered. “I think . . . I think maybe
she
do this. She is—how you say?—one cold bitch.”

Kelly straightened, frowning. “Yeah I’ll say she is.”

McCarron had seen that narrowed-down gaze before. At complex crime scenes Kelly had possessed moments of complete motionless while she mentally teased out a tangled thread of evidence and it had begun to unknot itself for her.

And if he hadn’t been still sluggish from his injuries and the after-effects of the medication they’d shovelled into him since his op, McCarron reckoned he might have put it together sooner himself.

He opened his mouth. Kelly shot him a warning glance that cut him off before he had a chance to speak.

“We’ll make sure this woman doesn’t get away with it,” she promised. “Ray, you stay with Yana. I’ll go find the cops.”

“C–cops?” Yana said, voice rising. “No cops! I not trust them.”

Kelly met McCarron’s eyes with a gaze that was flat and implacable.

“Don’t worry—it’s clear what happened here,” she said grimly. “The evidence speaks for itself.”

Lytton came round and found his head in a vice being pounded by sledgehammers from the inside. At least, that was what it felt like.

To begin with it was all he could do to lie very still while he tried to find a way around the pain inside his skull. After a few moments he realised he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.

He was lying on his side with his hands bound at the wrists behind him. The ground underneath felt hard, cold and damp. He could feel no wind so he guessed he was inside but couldn’t be sure. His eyes seemed to have been glued shut.

That was only one reason for the sense of panic that engulfed him.

Lytton could smell the blood, taste it thick and cloying in his nose and the back of his throat. An image of Veronica dead amid a splash of scarlet ruin, and then Steve Warwick’s sprawled body, hit him with a jolt that took away what little breath he had left.

Try as he might he couldn’t remember what happened next—only that it had been a shock. Even more of a shock than finding his partner beaten to death on their day of glory.

But what?

He bit down on his fear and bucked furiously, bulking the muscles in his shoulders and forearms. He thought he felt something give a little between his wrists, transferring a pressurised stab into his hands. If he didn’t get loose soon he was going to lose all feeling in them.

The realisation gave him the impetus to try again, a thrashing effort that turned the pain vicious enough to be frightening. The kind of pain that came with serious injury. He lay still, gasping and began to wonder if his eyes were open after all but it was dark. Or if he’d gone blind.

And in the buzzing blackness he heard the sound of a door handle being rattled.

Lytton froze, straining to hear above the thunder of pulse beating in his ears. In the background he could hear the sounds of the racecourse—the commentator’s voice, the crowds—but muffled and at a distance. So whatever had happened he hadn’t been taken far.

The rattling stopped. Lytton was wracked by indecision. Did he call out and chance rescue—or would attracting attention mean they’d finish what they’d started?

He took a deep breath.

DI O’Neill rattled the handle of yet another locked door and sighed in frustration. This was all taking far too long.

He heard footsteps, turned to see Dempsey approaching along the basement corridor.

“Anything?”

Dempsey shook his head, hunching his shoulders inside his jacket. “Not a very trusting lot are they?” he said. “Every door’s locked up tight.”

“Yeah,” O’Neill muttered, “and if there are explosives here they could be behind any one of them.”

He raked a hand through his hair, pursed his lips. Outside, the noise of the crowd swelled and broke as another stampede of winner and losers romped across the finish line. The headline race was rapidly approaching, he knew, and with it the perfect timing for a monstrous act of violence.

“We need to go back to Cheever,” he said. “Get him to rustle up a dog team.”

“Got to be the fastest way boss.” Dempsey was already turning away. “I’ll keep searching.”

“No,” O’Neill said quickly. “I’ll grab someone from racecourse security with some keys and do that. Why don’t you go and see if you have better luck with the charming Mr Cheever than I did?”

“But—”

O’Neill glared at him. “It might have been phrased as a question, detective constable but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t really an order deep down.”

Dempsey must have known what O’Neill was doing. He hesitated for a moment as if to argue then nodded gravely. “Give me the shitty end of the stick why don’t you?” he said but it was a half-hearted protest. He turned on his heel without waiting for a reply and hurried away.

O’Neill watched him go, aware of the inexorable ticking noise inside his head, his imagination painting a cartoon alarm clock surrounded by wires and sticks of ACME gelignite.

For a start, you can give over thinking like that.

He shook himself and reached for another handle.

When the door of the storeroom rattled from the outside, Dmitry froze. He was halfway through unloading a linen hamper filled with wine-and sauce-stained tablecloths and napkins. The hamper was what he wanted. A plastic tub on castors, it was plenty large enough to conceal-carry a body if he cracked a couple of the long bones to fold it inside. He didn’t think the body would object.

He waited utterly still, listening. And something in the quality of silence told him that whoever stood outside the locked door was listening too.

Dmitry relaxed slightly knowing they would tire first. He gave them nothing to sustain their interest, whoever they were.

After a moment or so he heard the grit of footsteps turning away, their muffled echo growing fainter. Another doorway, another rattle and pause. Check and move on.

Security guard maybe?
Dmitry was unconcerned. He could handle the calibre of man who would work here. Especially one not high enough up the food chain to be trusted with his own set of keys. Either that or he was simply too lazy to use them.

Dmitry finished emptying the hamper, working quickly, leaving a few of the larger tablecloths in the bottom and adding some used towels from the washrooms. They would be more absorbent.

He grimaced.
Damn Myshka and her temper!

In a pocket his iPhone began to sound. He dug for it, glanced at the display.

Speak of the devil . . .

“What is it?” he greeted, brusque.

Myshka showed her displeasure at his tone by a brief offended pause. “Where are you?” she demanded, matching him.

“Basement.”

“Well get back up here,” she said. “Quickly.”

He let his breath out through his nostrils.
What do you think I’m doing—stopping for a cigarette break?

“I needed something to carry your—”

“Never mind that,” she growled. “The girl has found him anyway. She is with her boss—the old man. I manage to get out of there just in time. But if you hurry . . .”

Dmitry shoved the hamper away from him. “I’m on my way.”

It took Kelly a while to work her way down the building. Despite her words to Yana about fetching the cops—and the inevitable arrest which would follow—she had no intention of giving herself up just yet. Even allowing for shock and the obvious language barrier there were holes in the woman’s account that Kelly could have driven a bus through.

If Yana had locked herself in the bathroom as she’d claimed, where had the blood she’d tried to wash away come from? Indeed, why had she scrubbed herself clean in such an apparently methodical way if she was in shock and terrified? The woman herself appeared uninjured. And although she’d reacted to her husband’s body with apparent horror, Kelly was unconvinced by that. In her experience people lied a lot more readily than the physical evidence ever could.

In her brief examination of the private box she’d seen cast-off blood spatter across the walls and furniture. The voids and overlaps told her the beating had been prolonged and vicious. Without a more scientific analysis she could only guesstimate the point of origin but everything pointed towards the central conference table. There were enough small gouge marks and scratches on the surface to show that Warwick had probably been restrained there while he’d been worked over. It had not, she noted grimly, been a quick nor easy death.

And whatever she might say, Kelly suspected that Yana had been in the room while it had been happening.

Maybe she’d wanted to?

Maybe,
she wondered with a sickened realisation,
the beating had been
for
Yana.

She shook her head. She was allowing supposition to creep in and that was what had helped convict
her
six years ago.

Allardice made sure of that.

“I think you’re involved somehow, Yana,” she said out loud to an empty room, “but if you’re innocent I’ll do my damnedest to prove it.”

The question remained—who else had been in that room when Steve Warwick died? They had walked out dripping either Warwick’s blood or their own and summoned the lift at the end of the corridor.

And despite her determination to keep an open scientific mind, she couldn’t help the fear that unknown person might be Matthew Lytton. She told herself it didn’t matter but knew she was lying.

Kelly pressed all the floor buttons and held the doors open at each stop, bending to check the floor for any signs her quarry had passed that way.

By the time she reached the basement she was beginning to wonder if she’d missed it. Maybe
they’d
noticed the blood while they were in the lift and taken steps to stem the flow. In which case, the cast-off trail might be much less noticeable or have stopped altogether.

But as the doors slid open at the final stop she saw at once that this was not the case. If anything, the blood drops were larger and more frequent.

Compared to the luxurious decor upstairs the basement was utilitarian with no frills, lined by what looked like storerooms. The floor was painted concrete and the blood had disintegrated into satellite spatters as it hit and dispersed. Among the general stains and scuff marks ignored by the cleaning crew, it would not be obvious to the untrained eye.

She stepped out of the lift feeling a slight pang as the doors closed behind her, cutting off her escape route. The patches of blood were larger, Kelly saw, which the analytical side of her brain knew was simply down to the way it reacted to the roughened surface on which it fell. Nevertheless, her purely emotional side could not suppress a shiver.

The evidence led her to a doorway on the right. Kelly reached for the handle.

And stopped.

In the past she had worked the most horrific crime scenes but always with the knowledge that some other brave soul had been there first, cleared and secured the area. That whatever she found and documented was safe, in a way.

Now her brain raced ahead. On the other side of this door could be either another victim or a murderer. She had already been tried and convicted once. Did she really want to go leaving traces at another scene? Would anyone believe she had nothing to do with it? Her imagination rioted.

“Would you please explain to the court Miss Jacks why you decided to investigate this yourself instead of doing what any normal, sane, law-abiding person would do—staying well clear and calling the professionals?”

Kelly let her hand drop and backed away from the door, her only instinct now to get out of there without discovery.

Harry Grogan yanked open the door of the private box with more force than was strictly necessary. The doors up here were sturdy solid timber and it bounced loudly against its stop.

He halted, took a breath. It was futile, he recognised, to take out his anger on inanimate objects. He stepped through, closing the door more calmly behind him and straightened his camel coat.

It was time to go down and see the colt saddled, to listen to the trainer’s brittle confidence and last minute instructions to a jockey who knew the horse better than anyone.

Grogan loved that part of ownership—watching the colt filled with the buzz of imminent action, seeing him stride round the parade ring with arrogant ease and burst from the starting gate like a grey rocket.

But part of the pleasure for Grogan had always been the sharing of it. And now Irene was not able to do that he’d thought his mistress might prove a worthy substitute.