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He tore off a strip of trouser leg and used his teeth to rip it in half. Clumsily he pressed the strip of flesh back into the wound hole, smoothing it into place. The debris would have to be cleaned out later. For now it was enough to stop the bleeding. He wrapped the trouser material around his calf, laying his leg back hard on the floor to get the pressure, and, wincing at the pain, tied the material against his shinbone. The blood pumped on for a few seconds, trickling through his fingers. Then it slowed until it was just running out of the edges of the wound.

He thought of the spots on Gerber’s tunic. Lucy and Susan would have bled a lot. He wondered what their last thoughts had been. He recalled their wrists. The way Gerber had sliced them. Up and down. Not left to right.

And then he got it. He let out all his breath and slumped back against the wall. He’d just figured out what the Perspex tubes were. And it wasn’t good. Not good at all.

It meant Gerber would be back before long.

63

Flea’s team were trained in MOE – method-of-entry techniques. A smart name for the time-honoured skill of kicking in doors, except that when the police did it, it was with specialist equipment and the blessing of the law. The unit went back each year for a day’s requalification training. The last session had been only a month ago and Flea knew that the forced-entry tool-bag – which Wellard called the Bag of Bollocks – was still to hand in the office.

She drove back fast, using roads the traffic units didn’t bother with, grabbed the bag and the heavy cylinder of the thermal lance the team used to cut through metal, put them both in the car and headed back towards Farleigh Park Hall. She didn’t have very long.

She was pissed off with herself. It was brainless to have dealt directly with Ruth Lindermilk. She shouldn’t have tinkered around. She should have treated her like an object, should have got in there, taken the first opportunity she had, kicked the door down and grabbed the photo of Thom. Time had just been slipping out of her hands. And all the time Misty had been decomposing.

She parked further up the road, careful not to go anywhere near the body-recovery scene. There might still be police there. Hiking the bag on her shoulder, she headed up through the undergrowth.

As always the hamlet was hushed – deserted. It was only the one or two cars parked down the lane that told her anyone was at home. Someone somewhere was watching sport – she could hear crowds cheering as she passed a window. At the bungalow she took a moment to go to the top of the garden and peer out over the wall, just to satisfy herself that no one was watching, then went to the back of the house and set to work.

First she tried all the doors and windows: no point pulling out the heavy artillery if Ruth had simply left a door unlocked. Everything was tightly closed, about what you’d expect with Ruth’s paranoia. The bungalow had quarter-lights in the lower windows, which were small and easy to break. She went to the kitchen ones and studied them. If she remembered rightly the sink and the dishwasher were under them. She recalled a butler sink. Solid. It would hold her weight.

She pulled on gloves and fumbled in the bag, past all the big equipment, for the smallest in the arsenal of tools: the tiny spring-loaded centre punch. They called it the Glasgow key. It took no effort at all, and now she gave just the smallest of taps against the pane. A sharp crack and a spider-web break zigged out into the float glass. It was the tiniest sound, but even so she held her breath and checked over her shoulder. The garden stood motionless – not a breath of air, not a sound of wildlife moving, only the distant hum of the television in the still air.

Tongue between her teeth she pulled out the pieces of glass, cleaning off the edges with a cloth. The last thing she needed was blood, forensic evidence that would link her to this break-in. When it was clean she pulled her sweatshirt sleeve all the way down over her hand and pushed her arm inside, feeling for the latch. She found it, tugged at it. It was locked, so, groping around, she found the other. That was locked too, with no key in it. She stood back, swearing to herself. It’d have to be the little wrecking bar, then. This time it worked like a dream. It fitted perfectly under the locks. The first came out after two or three wrenches and the second with no effort at all, splinters scattering everywhere.

Very carefully she opened the window and lifted the bag of tools through it. The curtains were closed as usual and when she peeped through there were no lights on, only the illumination of the green light on the boiler and the little pilot flame flickering blue. She could smell cats and food, lasagne or something – maybe what Ruth had eaten last night. Did she know, as she put the food into the microwave, that it was the last thing she’d ever eat in her life? It didn’t feel right, this suicide. Not at all right. Yesterday on the phone Ruth had sounded fine. Happy, even.

Not now. Don’t think about it now. She pulled her sleeves back and hoisted herself up into the window, arms trembling. Even though she worked at it – going into the office gym and doing high-weight, low-rep lifting whenever she found a spare moment – she didn’t really have the upper-body strength for her job at the best of times. And recently, with no time for the gym and not enough food, it had got worse. She had to fight now just to lift her own weight up into the kitchen.

She fell inside, into the half-gloom, knocking over a bottle of washing-up liquid, landing among the dirty crockery in the sink – something smashing as she went. She dropped down on to the kitchen floor and found that her trousers were soaked. Water dripped on to the earth on her shoes, clinging to the tiles and leaving a perfect print. She scuffed it with her heel. Cleaned off the worst of the mud with a kitchen towel. In the cupboard under the sink she found plastic freezer bags – should have thought of this before – and pulled two on over her trainers.

The living room was ghostly. Just the light from the broken kitchen window behind her filtered through on to Ruth’s possessions, the books and photos, the piles of paperwork and the empty glasses. A large glass of Coke was on an occasional table, an opened bottle of champagne next to it. Cats’ eyes blinked in every corner.

She went to the bureau where Ruth had put the photo and tested the drawer. Still locked – no key. She gave the rest of the bureau a cursory search for the key, checking inside a small papier-mâché cup, fingering her way through a desk tidy full of paper clips. She dropped some in her hurry, leaving them where they fell – it didn’t matter. There was no concealing there’d been a break-in.

She found the small pry bar in the bag and inserted the head into the gap in the drawer. From the wall Ruth Lindermilk and her son stared down impassively at her. Someone says, ‘I’ll take a photo,’ and you let them, she thought. You let them whether you want it or not, and before you know it that moment – that unthought-out, unplanned and out-of-control moment – is all you have left to mark a life. And then you’re dead.

She turned away from the photos and jemmied the lock in one hit. It caved with a loud splintering. She let the jemmy clatter down and wrenched open the drawer.

It was empty.

She stood there for a moment, staring stupidly at it.

‘Shit, Ruth. Shit.’

The cats shrank away, cowering nervously behind chairs and sofas. She slammed the drawer on to the floor and stood in the middle of the room, her hands out, staring at the rows and rows of books. If Ruth hadn’t left the photo in the drawer, where had she left it?