“What was that noise, Adrienne? Are you ok?”
Adrienne whispered into the phone.
“It’s trying to get in. I think it’s taking a run up and throwing itself against the door.”
“The door is locked, I hope.”
“Yes. But it’s not very strong.”
Another loud thud interrupted the conversation.
“Adrienne, is there anything in the room that you can use as a weapon?”
Adrienne looked around the room. It was a bedroom and wasn’t the kind of place where you could be expected to find something with which to arm yourself.
“There’s a lava lamp.”
“Is there anything heavy? Like an ornament or something?”
“I collect paperweights. They’re pretty heavy. I’ve got about fifteen. If you could see me, you wouldn’t think I’m the kind of girl who’d collect paperweights.”
“Ok, Adrienne. Gather them together on the bed –“
“And the lava lamp?”
“Anything that can be used as a weapon, yes. If the intruder gets into your room, throw the paperweights at his forehead, between the eyes. Make every shot count.”
There was another loud crash as Adrienne’s bedroom door gave way to another assault and the wolf found himself face to face with his prey. It blinked its eyes, one blue and one brown as it snarled and drooled, sizing up its quarry.
Adrienne looked at his paw and saw a ring of industrial staples securing his gaffer tape wrapped foot to his leg.
She recognised the beast.
The wolf took a step forward.
Adrienne held up a paperweight, ready to throw it.
“Arnie? That is you, isn’t it? You know me. Adrienne. Your girlfriend. You don’t want to hurt me, do you?”
Arnold heard noises coming from the human but his brain could no longer translate the words into anything meaningful.
“I know you’re in there somewhere, Arnie. You don’t want to kill me. You don’t need to do this.”
Arnold cocked his head to one side as if he was listening to what the woman was saying. Then, without warning, he hurled himself at his best friend.
Anne’s eyes welled up with tears as she could only listen to what happened next. She heard the wolf’s razor-sharp teeth tear Adrienne’s cheek off. She heard the cracking of bones as the wolf dragged the screaming girl around the room. She heard the gurgle of Adrienne’s last breaths as blood poured from her throat where Arnold had sliced it open. She heard Adrienne’s body battered against the walls as Arnold took her whole head in his jaws, worrying it like a puppy might play with an old soft toy until her spinal cord snapped.
The police car skidded to a halt on her driveway as Arnold galloped off into the distance. Two officers leapt out of the vehicle and sprinted into the house. Immediately one of them sprinted out again and threw up over Adrienne’s prized black rose bush. Once his stomach was empty he joined his partner back at the bedroom.
“Sorry about that, Sid.”
Sid had seen it all before.
“Don’t worry, mate. You did the right thing, not contaminating the crime scene.”
PC Nick Grobbler was still embarrassed.
“Should we go in?”
“Nah. We’ll stay here until the SOCO boys and girls get here. There’s nothing we can do except keep the place secure. I mean, she’s dead. She’s not going anywhere. Other officers will look for the bastard who did this.”
Nick didn’t want to look at the scene anymore. It looked like a madman had gone crazy with a chainsaw in an abattoir. Blood and guts were strewn about everywhere and Adrienne was hardly recognisable as a human being. Sid took a plastic bag from his pocket and handed it to Nick.
“Just in case you want to barf again.”
Nick was grateful for the bag – he wasn’t convinced that he could keep down what was left in his stomach – and was relieved when he saw two figures in Tyvek suits coming up the stairs. The leading figure, a bespectacled man in his early sixties, nodded a greeting to the two police officers.
“Another animal killing, officers?”
“Too early to say, Dennis. I mean, it looks like it, yeah, but that’s for you to say, isn’t it?”
Nick cut in.
“We did see a big dog, like a wolf, running away from the house.”
Dennis slipped his hands into a pair of latex powder-free gloves, grateful that he no longer had to dust the gloves first before putting them on. Technology was a wonderful thing. He stepped over the threshold of the doorway.
“Come on, Miss Winch. We have work to do.”
Susan followed her mentor into the bedroom, taking care not to disturb anything. A third figure, a forensic photographer followed them. Dennis clasped his hands behind his back.
“So Miss Winch, tell me what you see.”
This was going to be a particularly difficult experience for the trainee. She knew whose house she was in. She’d known the victim. Adrienne was her friend.
“The room is approximately 5 metres by 4 metres, tastefully decorated in a Gothic style, with purple walls and –“
Dennis held a finger up.
“Just the relevant facts, Miss Winch.”
Susan looked down at the floor briefly.
“Sorry, sir.”
She tried again.
“The room is approximately 5 metres by 4 metres, which will be confirmed by a laser measuring tool.”
“Good. And the perimeter has already been assigned as the boundary of the property. Step two?”
“Establish security. The tape is already in place and police officers assigned to guard the perimeter.”
“Step three?”
“Step three is umm…”
“Determine the type of crime that has occurred.”
“Of course, sir. Homicide.”
Nick, who was still at the door, although looking anywhere but into the room, nudged his partner.
“You think?”
Susan continued with her checklist.
“Identify any threats to the evidence. Inside the house, none. In the garden, yes. The weather. It could rain or even snow. There’s a team processing the exterior as we speak.”
Adhering rigidly to procedure was probably the best thing for Susan right now. She reported her observations to her superior in a methodical and objective manner although inside she was in turmoil. To Dennis, the victim was a female Caucasian, in her mid-twenties, of average build. Her wounds consisted of numerous bite-marks to the head, neck, and torso, removal of the long intestine, and a severed spinal cord (which would be recorded as the cause of death). To Susan, the victim was a dear friend, a young woman who enjoyed life and knew how to have fun, a young woman who didn’t judge but accepted people for who they were, a young woman who didn’t deserve to have had her life cut short in such a horrible and obscene way.
Finishing up his evaluation, Dennis handed Adrienne’s mobile phone to the detective who had been assigned control of the case.
“She took a photo of her killer.”
Detective Sergeant Nigel Dunstable opened the picture gallery and saw a photo of an emaciated – no, partly decomposed – wolf with different coloured eyes and a ring of industrial staples around one of its legs.
19
Trevor and Tracey hadn’t been able to even get close to Adrienne’s house, but the flashing blue lights they saw in the distance told them all that they needed to know. They were too late.
Tracey slammed the door in Trevor’s face as she stormed into the house, forcing him to use his own keys to get into the building. She’d stonewalled him for the rest of the car journey and was in no mood to speak to him now. But she had to.