The Moss house was empty, not only of people, but of anything valuable the Mosses might have owned. Key pieces were conspicuous by their absence – a gap on the mantle, a lonely picture hook, telling spaces in display cabinets and dents in the carpet. The Mosses had been cleaned out and there was a smear of blood on the door.
DS Poole’s good mood was now so fragmented he was near to tearing up what was left of it in sheer frustration. A conspiracy of middle-class disinterest and a gigantic Leylandii had foiled any eyewitness accounts of comings or goings, and there was no CCTV footage of the road. There had been a petition against it, so none had been installed. For people who valued their privacy so much, the neighbours seemed extremely perturbed by the police presence on the normally quiet avenue, and Poole was only half amused by the double standard.
The only evidence of recent occupation were the criss-crossed tyre marks in the gravel of the drive, just a series of streaks and disturbances with nothing to indicate what type of vehicles had come and gone. There was a single dog turd on the patio with no other evidence of a dog. One of the neighbours had confirmed they’d heard a dog barking, but hadn’t known the Mosses had owned one and would have objected if they had. Ash Road was a quiet, residential place with no room for dissent or variation from the unwritten rules of local convention. The only dog Poole could think of was Buster, the lolloping companion of Maura Lyle and erstwhile pet of Bob Silver, and he would certainly never have fitted in on Ash Road. Poole had the distinct impression that mongrels were anathema in that part of town, whether they had two legs or four.
Poole turned to the two young DCs he’d brought with him. ‘I want it searched, dusted, photographed and raked with a nit comb – I want to know if Estelle Hall was here, and I want anything, anything at all, that might tell us where she’s gone. Keep on at the neighbours. Someone must have seen something. Half a houseful of stuff doesn’t disappear on its own!’
While he’d been peering at dog shit, one of the DCs had been opening drawers and rifling through. ‘Got something here that might be of interest,’ he called out, waving a document at Poole.
‘What is it?’
‘A marriage certificate, denoting Elizabeth Moss’s maiden name as Henderson. The witnesses include Gordon Henderson. Looks like Mrs Moss was his sister.’
Poole’s mouth dropped open. ‘Why on God’s earth didn’t we know there was a bloody sister? And more to the point why didn’t we know she was a relative of one of the previous victims? Has anybody got a frigging clue what the hell is going on?’ His voice had risen to the point of a bellow, which made his colleagues wince and flush with embarrassment. His look dared any one of them to come back with “You’re the boss, you tell us?”
Maura hated night driving. Not that it was night – it was five in the afternoon – but winter brought darkness early. Daylight was a distraction, but night brought everything back to roost. As she drove through the lanes towards the village where Cheryl and Connie lived, she couldn’t help but see Gordon’s dead grey face in her mind, or imagine Dr Moss hanging, his face black and bloated. And poor Bob, poor, poor Bob who had been so lonely for the daughter he’d never found. She should have done more for him. Had the depression deadened her so much that she could see nothing clearly any more?
She turned the car into the lane that ran past the back of the Grange. It was the shortest route to the village and allowed her to avoid the labyrinth of the new estate. But the route was bringing things back far too vividly for her mind to cope with. She needed to concentrate on the road; it was badly lit and hard to negotiate when you were distracted by the faces of the dead.
But not so distracted that it was possible to miss the flash of light in the dog’s eyes as he bolted in front of the car and nearly caused a collision with the wall. Maura was sure it was Buster – she’d recognise that lolloping gait anywhere.
He’d been on her mind since Cheryl had told her about Bob, but now he had disappeared into the grounds of the Grange and she had no choice but to go after him. ‘Bloody dog!’ she hissed as she swung the car onto the rough track that led to the back of the house.
The place was in total darkness, empty now of all its residents and even more repugnant in the light of the weak winter moon. The curve of her headlights lit it up briefly, the glare reflected in the kitchen window and giving her the impression the house was leering at her. ‘Creepy bastard hole,’ she muttered as she wrenched on the handbrake and switched the engine off, plunging everything back into darkness once more. ‘Buster! Come on, boy, come to Maura.’
There was nothing, no sense of him in the dark courtyard, no sound of him snuffling as he usually did. The little sod had disappeared. She hoped he hadn’t run around to the front of the house. She was already having second thoughts about having driven there at all, let alone the prospect of poking around the place in the dead of night. She’d not forgotten the incident with the rock and suddenly felt stupid for being there at all. What kind of idiot went back to a murder scene?
‘Buster! Come on!’ she called, hopeful he’d come running when he heard a familiar voice. Poor thing must be terrified and confused with Bob gone. She was terrified and confused herself.
She glanced around. The courtyard was full of shadows, all of them stretching out, none of them dog-shaped. ‘Please, Buster,’ she pleaded to the darkness. ‘Just come on, we’ll find biscuits!’ It was a last-ditch attempt, a vain hope that the resonance of that word would tempt him out.
She heard a whine, plaintive and distant. But he’d heard her at least.
Galvanised with hope that she’d found him, she walked towards where she thought the noise had come from. ‘Where are you, boy? Come to Maura.’
The whine had seemed to come from the house, from a door next to the kitchen that she had assumed to be a coal shed during her brief stay there. Even in the watery moonlight she could see the door was open. Had Buster gone in there and got himself stuck? She bloody hoped not. ‘Come on, boy, come on out.’
The voice behind her struck her ears like a gunshot, jarring her senses and freezing her to the spot.
‘No one’s coming out, Nurse. No one’s coming out ever again.’
Recognition crept up the back of Maura’s spine, ruffling the hairs on the back of her neck and making her tongue stick to the roof of her mouth. She knew that voice.
She made to turn, confusion clouding her judgement. The “What are you doing here?” that had formed in her mind never reached her lips.
The brick hit her in the face before the words had even reached her throat.
I have never been in trouble with the law, primarily because the law is an ass and, like the donkey that it is, doesn’t know its own ass from its elbow. Staying off the radar is an art form I perfected long ago – you stay small, you stay ugly and you stay quiet. If you do that, you remain unnoticed.
I’m with Connie and Cheryl now. The dog is howling in the other room clawing at the paintwork. All girls together. It’s like a sleepover, a pyjama party – friends reunited! Ha, three unwise monkeys more like. Connie speaks her evil, Cheryl sees it but ignores it, and me? I see it, I hear it, I’ve spoken it and now I’m delivering us. Should have done it years ago.
I didn’t even need the key I’d copied for the nurse’s house. I bumped into Cheryl at the fish and chip shop. Not difficult to do given that I’d followed her there. Old friends and familiar faces become quite the port in a storm and mine was so old and familiar I got invited back without a second thought. She even believed the dog had found its own way to me. It’s always been Cheryl’s problem, believing everything she was told without question.
Cheryl is looking twice at me now, from two eyes that are sitting on the kitchen table in a pool of sticky blood.
They didn’t even know I’d been sacked. There’s friendship for you, as fickle as fate and twice as brutal.