Henry had the murder file on his knees and shuffled out the crime-scene photographs, trying to compare them to where he was now and also in relation to a plan-drawer’s map of the location. He kept peering at the documents and glancing up as Flynn drove at a snail’s pace on the track.
‘Stop here,’ Henry said and got out of the car.
The woods were across to his right. Henry leaned on the car roof and took it all in. The motorway was a hundred metres beyond the far perimeter of the woods, but out of sight because of a small hill rise. Traffic noise could clearly be heard, thundering up and down, north-south.
He looked to his right, back down along Grimeshaw Lane towards the A683, which he could see in the distance.
To his left the track carried on to the motorway bridge, beyond which it became Ridge Lane and went on to the Ridge Estate in Lancaster, a fairly middling council estate. The road over the motorway bridge was nothing more than a track, servicing the farmland either side of the motorway. Henry turned to look at the vast area of countryside behind him to the east. Then he turned back and looked at the woods.
Flynn got out and joined him.
Henry pointed. ‘She was discovered just in there.’
Flynn nodded. Henry hadn’t told him very much — hardly anything — about the girl’s murder, even though he had asked, but he said, ‘Victim, location, offender… usually a link of some sort.’
Henry nodded. It was a standard quote, one right out of the Murder Investigation Manual. ‘Unfortunately only the location is known in this case.’
‘Still,’ Flynn pulled a ruminative face, ‘the location usually says a lot… I take it she wasn’t murdered here, though?’
‘No.’
‘Not a place you’d trip over by accident,’ Flynn said.
No, it wasn’t, Henry thought. Whoever dumped her here would probably have had local knowledge.
‘Are you going into the woods today?’ Flynn asked.
‘Maybe later. Let’s call on Joe Speakman first.’
Henry had once been to Speakman’s house, a few years earlier for a party of some sort, but for the life of him could not remember the event clearly, because he had been drunk. Possibly a fortieth, but he did recall where the house was and could direct Flynn there. It was not far from Moss Syke wood, but he attached no importance to that.
Flynn did a six-point turn in the tiny car and bumped it back down Grimeshaw Lane without ripping the sump off it. From there it was almost straight across the A683 into Denny Beck Lane, then over the River Lune via Halton Bridge into the village of Halton itself. Then he bore right, travelling east with the river on his right, up to Halton Green, where he found Speakman’s house. It was large, detached, with quite extensive private grounds, bordered by Leylandii trees and high fencing.
Flynn gave an appreciative whistle. ‘Nice one. Obviously supers are paid too darn much.’
‘Not nearly enough,’ Henry said. ‘I think it helps that his wife is, or was, something big in local government, on a similar whack to him.’
Flynn pouted and did the arithmetic. One-fifty grand plus per year. A nice little earner if you can get it.
Flynn drove up the curved drive and stopped at the front of the house alongside a TVR Tuscan in a silvery-purple colour that changed and sparkled depending on how you looked at it. He gave another whistle.
‘Literally,’ he said, ‘they don’t make ’em like that any more.’
‘What do you want to do?’ Henry asked him.
‘I wouldn’t mind saying hello. Then I’ll keep out of your way.’
Henry nodded, got out and went to the front door and rang the bell on the door frame. He stood back and surveyed the front of the house with admiration. He was joined by Flynn, doing much the same thing.
But there was only so much admiring they could do before getting bored, as no one had yet answered the door. Henry pressed the bell again in a way which he hoped conveyed his impatience. He could hear it ring hollowly inside. Somewhere at the back of his mind he recalled that Speakman owned a dog of some sort. He remembered it being a noisy beast… but maybe it had died. It was a long time since he had been here and he still couldn’t recall the reason for the party. Had it been a twenty-first?
‘Maybe they saw you coming and hid,’ Flynn suggested. ‘Like my gran used to do when the rent man came.’
‘Maybe they saw you.’
Henry was about to hold his thumb on the doorbell again when he noticed that the door, though it appeared to be closed, was just pushed tight against the frame and there was a tiny gap all around the edge. He gave it a gentle nudge. It swung open easily onto a wide hallway.
And Henry froze, instinctively shooting out his right arm to prevent Flynn from entering.
One of those sensations of utter dread shimmied through him from chest to toe as he saw the reason why the dog had not barked.
It was a red setter, one of those daft, bouncy, never exhausted dogs that went through life with an optimistic, never-say-die attitude, backed up with little brain.
He remembered the dog’s name in that instant: Carlo.
Carlo, the red setter. If it was the same dog, that is.
But Carlo was now splayed out dead in the tiled hallway, half its head blown away, lying in a pool of thick treacly looking blood. One of the dog’s back legs jerked, then stopped moving.
‘Holy shit,’ Flynn hissed in Henry’s ear.
Henry was still frozen to the spot, but his mind was moving.
Flynn was right up by his shoulder and the two men exchanged a glance.
‘I’ll make my way around the back,’ Flynn whispered.
Henry nodded. Flynn split away.
Henry sniffed up and even through his damaged face could smell the reek of cordite. He stepped into the hall and moved to the edge, trying not to step in the blood, but also trying to listen hard, his senses on fire, heart slamming, palm clammy, forehead starting to sweat. His throat was dry and saliva did not want to form as he tried to imagine what hell he had blundered into here.
The stairs to the first floor ran up from the centre of the hallway up to a landing that split in two directions.
Henry moved forward, remembering that dead ahead was the door to the kitchen at the back of the house, a large open-plan room with a dining area leading out to a massive conservatory. It was all coming back to him now.
To his left was the door to the main lounge, which was closed. Over to the right were doors to the downstairs loo, another to a smaller hallway, off which were two further ground-floor rooms, a study and a small lounge converted to a music room with a big sound and vision system.
Ahead was the open kitchen door.
Henry went to it, stepping over blobs of blood, and halted on the threshold.
The kitchen was as he recalled it. Huge enough for a central island with an extractor hood hanging above it.
It was silent in here.
Then Henry saw a pair of feet jutting out from the far side of the island. Slippered female feet, not together, but apart.
He stood there for a few more seconds, not breathing. Looking, listening… and only then did he step into the kitchen, again keeping to the edge by the cupboards, and manoeuvred himself into a position from which he could see the rest of the body which lay half-propped against the island.
The injuries caused by a shotgun were horrific. A stomach shot, punching a hole the diameter of a mug into the stomach, and one straight in the face. Close range, instantly fatal, and although Henry could not see the exit wounds, from the amount of blood he knew they would be huge.
It was Joe Speakman’s wife, Stella.
Dead, having been shot and then staggered back against the island, and slithered down to her current position.