Chief Inspector Paul Ogundele did a dance of relief inside as he realised his CPR had done the trick. The child was alive! The only outward sign he gave, though, was a slight upturn of his mouth. An armed response officer hurried over to him.

‘All clear, sir. We’ve checked the place and it’s safe.’

A nod. ‘Get the paramedics in, now,’ he barked.

Florescent outfits overran the place in seconds. The little girl was taken away first, crying gently.

‘Will she be okay?’ Ogundele called.

‘Hard to say, but she doesn’t seem to have any broken bones. It’s a miracle. The fact she’s got the energy to cry is actually a good sign. I’m confident,’ replied a paramedic as he rushed by.

The teenage boy left next. He needed an urgent CT scan, and possible blood transfusion.

‘What about the father?’ the chief inspector asked.

‘Indications are he has overdosed, whether deliberately or not, we can’t say. He’ll have to have his stomach pumped, and until we ascertain what exactly he’s taken, we can’t be sure how to counteract the medication he’s ingested,’ a medic replied. ‘If he’s overdosed on paracetamol, there’s probably nothing anyone can do to stop his organs shutting down.’

‘Fingers crossed it’s ibuprofen or sleeping tablets, then,’ Ogundele replied. He was about to ask another question, but one of his officers sidled over.

‘Guv, we’ve got a problem regarding the mother.’

The scene up in the bedroom hadn’t changed at all. The teenager, Ruby Thomas, still lay prone over her mum. Blood still decorated the walls and ceiling. An officer stood nearby, looking lost and awkward.

A keening sound, so small and sad, drifted into the air.

Ogundele sighed, and a tiny part of his heart that still hadn’t hardened after years of service broke a little more. He was going to have to somehow persuade her to leave her mum. He backed out, grabbed a protective forensic suit, overshoes and gloves, then returned. Bent over the girl, voice low.

‘Hey, Ruby? My name’s Paul. Would you mind if we had a look at you, to see if you’re hurt?’

No movement. The only sound was sobbing.

Ogundele mouthed to the crime scene photographer, checking that everything had been recorded, then reached out and stroked the girl’s hair. She was floppy, shock robbing her of her ability to move or speak. He had seen it before.

‘Come on, Ruby. Your mum would want us to look after you. Can you look at me? That’s it.’

It took a lot of slow coaxing to make the girl let go of her mother’s body. He led Ruby down the stairs, away from the bloodbath, feeling her shaking as she leaned against him. At the moment, she couldn’t speak to anyone, but Ogundele was keen to get her down the station for a statement. First, she would have to be checked over for injuries, and an appropriate adult found to sit in on the interview, as she was underage. A colleague was calling a family friend named Fiona who was down as an emergency contact.

Ogundele didn’t make snap judgements, he had learned better than that over the years. He would let the scene tell its tale, allow the blood spatters to reveal what on earth had happened here. From his experienced eye, though, despite the diary condemning the teen, the blood and gore patterns did not add up to her standing in front of her mother and blasting her away. It looked like a terrible accident, particularly as Ruby’s trigger finger was bent at a strange angle, clearly broken. As for what other tragic series of events had taken place in the house, the truth would come out, eventually. It always did.

---

He watched the final ambulance pull away into the pre-dawn darkness and gave a sigh. The forensic team would be going over the house for hours before Dominique Thomas’s remains could be removed. Detectives would arrive soon to start their investigation. But this would be a Christmas Day the chief inspector wouldn’t forget in a hurry – and neither would the neighbours. He scanned the crowds of shocked faces at windows, rain tracking down the glass like tears. Those who had gathered soggily behind the cordon looked the same, too. Pale, open-mouthed, glassy-eyed beneath the street lamps and the twinkling fairy lights of neighbours’ outdoor decorations.

A guttural staccato call of a bird rang out. That magpie again. It made Ogundele pause and look around once more.

Wait. One person’s reaction looked different from everyone else’s numb shock. A blonde woman, crying and shaking. She caught his eye and turned away, but not before Ogundele spotted something flit across her features. Panic and guilt.

Ogundele got that tingling sensation again; the one he relied on during all his years of policing. Sadly, hauling someone in for questioning required more than a tingle.